0:00:00- How's it going? - Not bad.
0:00:02You?
0:00:03- So I was taking a sip, I'm well.
0:00:06I have, as of four seconds ago, started my holiday party.
0:00:10- Yeah, you started a little early.
0:00:12- I did not bring a bottle like I did.
0:00:14No, no, no, the critical error I made years ago,
0:00:17which I will not make again, was bringing the bottle with me.
0:00:20I have rationed appropriately.
0:00:22I do not have an inappropriate amount.
0:00:25And the only way for me to refill is if I go
0:00:28all the way downstairs.
0:00:30I am learning from my mistakes, don't worry.
0:00:33(phone ringing)
0:00:35How's it going?
0:00:36I agree, and we have a long night ahead.
0:00:40- Oh my God.
0:00:41- Are you having a beer tonight?
0:00:43- Not yet.
0:00:44- Pacing yourself.
0:00:46Very boring, but very adult.
0:00:48- Yes, I'm very tired today,
0:00:50so I'm having some caffeinated tea to help keep me
0:00:52nice and alert and lucid as much as possible
0:00:56for this podcast.
0:00:58This is busy week.
0:00:59For Christmas week, in our family, we tend to basically
0:01:05do nothing for an entire week.
0:01:07And when you have a job or something, a regular job,
0:01:12for the most part, not everybody, but for the most part,
0:01:15when you take a vacation, you just kind of stop going
0:01:18to the job and other people pick up your slack.
0:01:20And I know it's a little hard for the holidays,
0:01:21but when you're self-employed, as Casey, you know now,
0:01:25when you're self-employed, when you take a week off,
0:01:29the work doesn't get done by other people,
0:01:33it just doesn't get done.
0:01:34So all you're doing is moving the work from your
0:01:38quote vacation week, you're just moving it to different
0:01:40times before and after.
0:01:42So the week before vacation is extra busy,
0:01:45and that's where we are now.
0:01:48- Which explains why I saw a new test flight beta
0:01:52from Overcast fly by like, I don't know, half an hour ago
0:01:55or something like that.
0:01:56- Yeah, it was like 20 minutes ago, because I'm trying
0:01:58to fix all these bugs in time for the App Store Connect
0:02:00holiday shutdown, which--
0:02:02- When is that?
0:02:03I know what you're referring to.
0:02:04- I believe it begins on the 24th, I think, which is Monday.
0:02:06- I'm surprised it's that late.
0:02:08- It's something like that, but I want to ideally
0:02:11submit this to the App Store tomorrow, and that way,
0:02:14it gets approved probably by Thursday, and then if I have
0:02:18to do an emergency fix, I can issue that Thursday or Friday.
0:02:21- Smart.
0:02:22- It's a whole thing.
0:02:23So it's like everything is compressed,
0:02:26and it's a very busy week.
0:02:28This is the same time that I believe it was last year
0:02:32that I started using things, because in the holidays,
0:02:35like in our lead up to our big holiday family trip,
0:02:38all the stuff we traditionally do for that,
0:02:41we have a whole bunch of to-do items for that,
0:02:43in addition to just life stuff all catching up,
0:02:46end of the year stuff, tax stuff, all sorts of things,
0:02:50and it becomes very, very nice as you're running around
0:02:53doing crazy things to just be able to yell into your phone,
0:02:55"Hey, thing, add this to my to-do list and things,"
0:02:58or whatever, and to build up a quick list via Siri
0:03:01and be able to plow through them as you get chances to.
0:03:04So I'm in that kind of mode, like the super busy,
0:03:06doing everything mode, like getting tons of stuff done,
0:03:09juggling five different things,
0:03:10but I have an important update.
0:03:12I called US Bank this morning to inquire
0:03:16about my Tesla lease balance,
0:03:19and they said that they had just, this morning,
0:03:22received payment from Tesla, and I have a zero balance.
0:03:25- Yay!
0:03:26- Yeah, we finally, they're gonna send me a statement
0:03:29that confirms that I have a zero balance
0:03:31that I don't have yet, but they told me verbally
0:03:33that it is done, and this should be the last I hear
0:03:37of my old Tesla lease that Tesla failed to terminate
0:03:41properly when they offered to. (laughs)
0:03:44So-- - So, wait,
0:03:45so let me play this back to make sure
0:03:47my understanding is right.
0:03:48So you had paid a bunch of money that you shouldn't have
0:03:53against that lease that should have been closed
0:03:56but wasn't, or done, or what have you, and it wasn't.
0:03:58So that has or has not been refunded to you,
0:04:01that pile of money.
0:04:02- The pile that I had paid has--
0:04:04- Correct. - Tesla sent me
0:04:05a check for that.
0:04:06- Okay, and you have received it?
0:04:08- Yes, and I deposited it, and it hasn't bounced yet,
0:04:10so we'll see what happens. (both laughing)
0:04:12I don't know how long it takes to check
0:04:13to really be totally clear.
0:04:14I think it takes like a week. - Sure, sure.
0:04:16- I don't know, but yeah, so hopefully
0:04:18that doesn't bounce.
0:04:19If it does, it'll make for a great segment on the show.
0:04:22- Oh, my word, that would, in a way, I kind of want it to.
0:04:25(both laughing)
0:04:28Okay, so you have that money already,
0:04:29and as far as we can tell, all is on the up and up,
0:04:31and then the only other missing piece was to get the bank
0:04:35that held, or whatever the terminology is,
0:04:37that held the lease to agree that the lease is done.
0:04:40And that sounds like that is also now accomplished.
0:04:44- Yes, 'cause Tesla had to both pay me the money
0:04:46that I had overpaid to them,
0:04:47and they had to pay the bank the rest of the balance,
0:04:49'cause the bank sent me like a $5,000 bill.
0:04:51And so, (laughs)
0:04:54both of those things have now been done.
0:04:56And so as far as I can tell, I think I'm done.
0:04:59I think I'm finally out of that.
0:05:01I think it's all taken care of, finally,
0:05:04and I can finally get back to enjoying
0:05:06what is really my favorite car I've ever had,
0:05:09and I just want to enjoy it.
0:05:10So now I'm back to enjoying it.
0:05:12- Did you read, was it a Wired article, is that right?
0:05:16- Yes, this Dr. Elon and Mr. Musk, Life Inside,
0:05:21Tesla's Production Hell.
0:05:23- I have, you know, I typically don't read anything,
0:05:26anything like that, because here's, like, this,
0:05:28even before this lease debacle,
0:05:30where they totally butchered basic administrative tasks,
0:05:34I knew the company was a mess.
0:05:36I knew Elon Musk personally was a mess,
0:05:38and kind of a horrible person, especially to work for.
0:05:41And so I knew there was a bunch of, like,
0:05:43you know, toxic waste over there.
0:05:47And I love the car so much.
0:05:50I didn't want, I wouldn't want my view to be tarnished.
0:05:53I didn't want to have to get down into, like,
0:05:55the dirt of that and get involved in that.
0:05:56So, like, I don't pay attention to their drama,
0:06:00their company, their stock, anything like that.
0:06:03I don't get involved.
0:06:04I just like the car a lot,
0:06:05and there is no other car I'd rather have.
0:06:08And so whenever some big, you know,
0:06:11toxic whirlwind starts about them,
0:06:13I try to ignore it as much as possible.
0:06:15And a lot of them are BS anyway.
0:06:18Some of them are true, but a lot of them are BS anyway,
0:06:20so it's just kind of nice to just stay out of the whole thing.
0:06:22- Yeah, did you read this, Jon?
0:06:24- I read it, I just kept waiting for you to say,
0:06:25ignorance is lisp, but I guess you're off that train.
0:06:28(laughing)
0:06:29- Never. - Never.
0:06:30- I just didn't think about it.
0:06:30No, I'm never off the train, let's not get ridiculous.
0:06:32- The lisp puns will never end.
0:06:34- The puns will continue until morale improves.
0:06:36- Do you hear this, by the way?
0:06:38Can you hear this on my microphone?
0:06:39- It sounded like a printer for a split second.
0:06:41- Yeah, no, sure, people can print while I'm in here, it's fine.
0:06:43(laughing)
0:06:46- Which family member is committing--
0:06:50- It's the one that's my daughter, 'cause she doesn't care.
0:06:52(laughing)
0:06:53Just so you can hear the dulcet tones
0:06:55of my Canon inkjet printer.
0:06:57- Oh, yi yi yi.
0:06:58Now, I read this article, and then it was a good article,
0:07:01but it's really more of the same.
0:07:03Like, you don't need to read any more Elon Musk articles,
0:07:06or really any more Tesla articles.
0:07:08This is a little more detailed than I had read previously,
0:07:11but ultimately it says what we all knew,
0:07:13which is exactly what you were just trying to say, Marco,
0:07:15is that Elon seems to be kind of a dirtbag
0:07:19for a loose definition of the term,
0:07:21and the company seems to be a complete disaster.
0:07:23So, news at 11.
0:07:25- Yeah, exactly, exactly.
0:07:27- But I don't know, whatever.
0:07:29But it was interesting.
0:07:31I'm not saying don't bother,
0:07:33but it is exactly what you expect it to be.
0:07:36But it's well written.
0:07:37- Yeah, and it does raise the question.
0:07:39People have asked me before, how can I support them,
0:07:41and this horrible person who runs this company,
0:07:45how can I support them by being their customer?
0:07:47We've talked about this a little bit before.
0:07:51There's only so many companies to buy certain things from.
0:07:54There's only so many large corporations.
0:07:56Large airlines are a big one of these,
0:07:58where an airline can make you really mad,
0:08:01but then sometimes you gotta fly them again
0:08:02in the future anyway, 'cause there's only five airlines.
0:08:06With cars, there's a pretty small number
0:08:08of car companies out there that make cars
0:08:10that are anything like what I would drive.
0:08:12I don't know anything about the other ones, really.
0:08:15They could be led by horrible people, too.
0:08:18You typically don't become the CEO of a large corporation,
0:08:22and you especially typically don't succeed
0:08:24as the CEO of a large corporation
0:08:25without being able to play the politics game real well,
0:08:28and a lot of that comes kind of dirtily.
0:08:31Is that a word?
0:08:32- I know what you're saying, yeah, yeah.
0:08:33And so most people who run most large corporations
0:08:38have some dirt on them and are not the nicest
0:08:41or best people in all of their lives.
0:08:43And so it's like we typically just don't hear
0:08:47about most of the other ones.
0:08:49We hear about a few high-profile examples
0:08:50of these companies, but we don't hear
0:08:52about most of anything else.
0:08:54And so it's better to just do what you can here and there,
0:08:59but not be super religious about it,
0:09:01because chances are anything you love,
0:09:05somebody can ruin it by saying,
0:09:06"Well, you know, this executive who works there
0:09:09"was kind of a jerk once."
0:09:10So you gotta kind of be willing
0:09:13to look past some degree of that.
0:09:15- Yeah, my dad worked at IBM for a very long time,
0:09:18and by virtue of his particular role in the company,
0:09:21he would interact with the CEO
0:09:23on a not-completely-regular basis,
0:09:27enough that the CEO would recognize who my dad is,
0:09:29although my dad was nowhere near the CEO.
0:09:30It was one of those, like, he sidestepped his way
0:09:33into the CEO's world, if you will.
0:09:35Well, anyway, he worked there under the tenure
0:09:38of a few CEOs, 'cause he was there for like 30 years.
0:09:41And I'd asked dad once,
0:09:44this was around the time of a CEO change,
0:09:46"Hey, is Joe Smith or Susie Smith or whatever,
0:09:50"is Mr. and Mrs. Smith, are they kind of mean?"
0:09:53And my dad just looked at me and scoffed,
0:09:55and he was like, "Of course they are!
0:09:56"They're the CEO of IBM.
0:09:58"You don't get to that position by being nice."
0:10:00You know, which is exactly what you're saying.
0:10:03He was kind of almost offended
0:10:05that I'd even asked such a ridiculous question.
0:10:08Of course they're a jerk.
0:10:10- See also most politicians, right?
0:10:12Most politicians who start ranking highly,
0:10:16once you get to the national level especially,
0:10:19you have to be a certain level of dirtbag
0:10:21to be able to succeed and to climb the ladder.
0:10:25Very few people make it that far
0:10:27who aren't just total jerks in some way.
0:10:30Some do, it is possible to.
0:10:32Just the odds are against you.
0:10:34- Yeah, well done.
0:10:36All right, so let's continue,
0:10:37since we've already started with follow-up,
0:10:38and let's continue.
0:10:39A lot of people helpfully wrote in
0:10:42to tell us why your camera error happened.
0:10:45And some people seemed to think it was ridiculous
0:10:47we didn't know this.
0:10:48I will come to your defense, Marco, and say,
0:10:50"I had no idea this was a thing,
0:10:52"and I think that it's utterly preposterous."
0:10:55But Marco, would you like to tell us
0:10:57why your video cut off at just barely shy of 30 minutes?
0:11:00- All of Europe told us about this.
0:11:02(laughing)
0:11:04There was an EU import law that classified video cameras
0:11:09at a different tax or tariff or import rate,
0:11:13whatever it is, to other types of cameras.
0:11:16And that by the all DSLR and mirrorless manufacturers
0:11:21setting their limits to just shy of 30 minutes
0:11:23would get them classified not as a video camera,
0:11:26but as a still camera.
0:11:27And that got them, I guess, a lower import tax or whatever,
0:11:30and so they could be sold for lower prices.
0:11:32And so basically all of those camera makers
0:11:34that make those kind of cameras
0:11:36all limit their cameras to 29, 59 or whatever.
0:11:39And apparently we've also heard,
0:11:41although I have not yet verified,
0:11:42we've also heard that that tax regulation
0:11:45is getting relaxed next year,
0:11:47and so maybe the camera makers will adjust things.
0:11:50We also have already been told, thank you very much,
0:11:52about various hacked firmware things
0:11:54that we can install on our cameras.
0:11:56That's nice, I'm glad those exist, I'm not gonna do that.
0:11:59- Yeah, no, not a chance.
0:12:01- And finally, we absolutely did hear
0:12:03about external recorders to be used,
0:12:06to basically use HDMI recorders or recording monitors
0:12:09to get around this limit.
0:12:11That is nice, I believe I said this last episode,
0:12:13but cut it out, those cost like $800,
0:12:16and that doesn't seem like a great solution
0:12:19to this problem either.
0:12:20So my solution instead is gonna be
0:12:22I'm going to just not record
0:12:23for more than 30 minutes at once.
0:12:25(laughing)
0:12:27Chris Adamson writes and says,
0:12:28another reason not to use Dropbox for everything.
0:12:30So this was in the context of,
0:12:31why don't I just put pretty much everything in Dropbox
0:12:35or Google Drive or what have you?
0:12:36And so Chris says, another reason not to use Dropbox
0:12:38for everything, it cannot store bundle files,
0:12:40such as GarageBand projects.
0:12:42And Apple's support article notes
0:12:43that while GarageBand for iOS can save files locally
0:12:46or to iCloud, saving via the files app
0:12:47won't work to Dropbox, Google Drive, Box,
0:12:49or Microsoft OneDrive.
0:12:51John, I get the feeling that you're twitching
0:12:53because I didn't appropriately describe what a bundle is.
0:12:57Would you like to elaborate any or are you satisfied?
0:13:00- I'm not sure the summary is right
0:13:01where it says it can't store bundle files.
0:13:03The tech note says it can't store GarageBand files,
0:13:05which I assume are bundles.
0:13:06Bundle is just a directory full of files,
0:13:08but the directory itself has a dot
0:13:11and a bunch of letters at the end of it.
0:13:13And the OS and applications treat it specially
0:13:16and don't show you that it's a directory,
0:13:18they just show it to you as a file
0:13:19unless you do a particular run.
0:13:21Anyway, there's nothing particularly special
0:13:24about bundles or GarageBand bundles
0:13:28that would prevent Dropbox from storing them correctly.
0:13:31And in fact, I'm pretty sure Dropbox does store,
0:13:35you know, just bundles as a concept, okay,
0:13:37'cause I'm pretty sure I put some bundle files in there
0:13:39and taken them out and they continue to work.
0:13:40But there must be something about either
0:13:41how GarageBand works or how iOS treats them,
0:13:45or maybe there's some Mac-specific metadata
0:13:47that Dropbox doesn't support that's important in this case
0:13:49that Apple has a tech note that says,
0:13:51no, don't try to save your GarageBand files to cloud storage.
0:13:54You can save them to iCloud Drive,
0:13:55which again shows that it's not some limitation
0:13:57of cloud drives, it's just some limitation of these services.
0:13:59So yeah, that kind of gets back to what I was saying,
0:14:03or I think we talked about this when we were talking
0:14:04about Plex, like not all file systems are created equal
0:14:09when it comes to storing stuff from your Mac,
0:14:13because the rules about file names are different,
0:14:15and in this case, whatever thing is preventing
0:14:18this particular kind of bundle from working
0:14:19in a particular application might have
0:14:21particular requirements.
0:14:22Some applications are cranky about storing stuff
0:14:25on what they perceive to be network volumes,
0:14:28so you have to fool them somehow.
0:14:30We've talked about that before.
0:14:31So yeah, the world of file systems is still
0:14:35filled with pitfalls, and if you don't think about them
0:14:39and just think, oh, like everything is everything,
0:14:41and I can store this file anywhere I want,
0:14:44in a cloud, on a drive, you know,
0:14:46on a fish in a box with a fox, you actually kind of have
0:14:49to be careful a little bit.
0:14:52- All right, there's another link in the show notes
0:14:55which I only had a chance to very quickly glance at,
0:14:58because it came in late breaking.
0:15:01I don't know which one of you gentlemen added this.
0:15:02I'm guessing, John, but can you tell me
0:15:04about shortcuts.fun, please?
0:15:06- .fun, yeah.
0:15:07- That's a fantastic domain name.
0:15:09- It is a really good domain name.
0:15:10- Yeah, well, the first thing is that my work,
0:15:13firewall prevented me from getting to it.
0:15:14I'm assuming just because it has .fun on the name,
0:15:16you're like, you know what, just don't allow anyone
0:15:18to go to .fun from work, because they shouldn't
0:15:20be going there.
0:15:21Anyway, I got to look at it later.
0:15:23So this is a website and a library created by Josh Verant,
0:15:27and the upshot is it lets you make shortcuts
0:15:31by writing JavaScript, like just open a text field
0:15:34and start writing JavaScript against his library,
0:15:37and then it will compile it, sort of, or package it
0:15:40into a .shortcut file, which I'm assuming is just like
0:15:43a bundle directory that's zipped and renamed .shortcut
0:15:45or whatever, you can do it right on the website.
0:15:46You can go to the website, there's a text field,
0:15:48you can write stuff there, you can click a button
0:15:49and it will take what you typed in that text field
0:15:51and download in your browser a .shortcut file
0:15:54that you can run on iOS.
0:15:55And so this is like a reverse engineering
0:15:57of the .shortcut file format, which again,
0:15:59I know nothing about, but I assume,
0:16:00like so many of Apple's other formats,
0:16:02it's just either a zip or a zib file
0:16:06that if you decompress it as a directory full of files,
0:16:08then a particular format, a particular folder structure,
0:16:10and it just runs them.
0:16:12So if you do want to make shortcuts,
0:16:15but don't want to use the UI, this is the thing for you.
0:16:19What Josh wrote on the website is,
0:16:21"I built this library out of frustration
0:16:22with Apple Shortcuts app, as I found complex shortcuts
0:16:24were difficult to manage using this drag and drop interface.
0:16:26I wanted to write shortcuts the same way I write code,
0:16:28so I created shortcuts.js."
0:16:30Or shortcuts.js.
0:16:31He's got a big article in Medium where he describes
0:16:33the whole process and the reverse engineering,
0:16:35we'll put a link to that in the show notes.
0:16:37So that's cool, I mean, obviously this is a hack
0:16:40and it's reverse engineered and Apple can change
0:16:41the format at any time, yada, yada, yada.
0:16:43Like there's no guarantee this will continue to work,
0:16:46but it's nice that it has an option.
0:16:48Of course, one of the links is to an example.
0:16:51I said like, "What do these things look like?
0:16:52What does it look like when you write a shortcut
0:16:53in JavaScript?"
0:16:55Doesn't quite look maybe the way you would expect it to.
0:16:59So this is, they have a bunch of examples,
0:17:03like here's a battery level checker example,
0:17:06and everything is done in terms of what I presume
0:17:08are the underlying either Objective-C or Swift objects
0:17:11or whatever.
0:17:12So there's a thing called getBatteryLevel
0:17:15that gives you the getBatteryLevel, right?
0:17:16And the shortcut is, if you're writing the shortcut
0:17:18in the shortcuts app, it would be like,
0:17:20"Okay, we'll get the result of this action
0:17:22and then compare it with this comparison block."
0:17:24And you know, it's parameterized so it's a less than thing,
0:17:27and then when I say it's 20, it's like,
0:17:29"Oh, great, well now I get to write this in code,
0:17:30I'll just be able to do if getBatteryLevel less than 20."
0:17:33No.
0:17:34You have a function called conditional
0:17:36that takes an object with keys named input,
0:17:39and that's a string, which is the less than sign,
0:17:42and then value, and that's a number, which is 20,
0:17:44and then an if true key, which gives you an array of,
0:17:49just, it's like, it's not how you would write it.
0:17:52You don't, you can't just use the less than operator
0:17:54in JavaScript, I mean, this is,
0:17:56you could add this on top of the library,
0:17:59you know, eventually, this is like version one,
0:18:00or it just shows that under the covers,
0:18:03all those blocks you see in shortcuts
0:18:04apparently map directly to silly functions
0:18:07called conditional that takes strings as input to,
0:18:11it's just, it's not the way you would write it in code.
0:18:13I still say this is probably more comfortable
0:18:16for a programmer than using the shortcut UI.
0:18:19Not sure if it helps with debugging,
0:18:21I just, again, I just looked at this this afternoon.
0:18:23I don't think just because you write it in JavaScript,
0:18:25you can actually debug it in JavaScript,
0:18:27because in the end, you have to package it up
0:18:29as a .shortcut file and run it on your phone.
0:18:32At that point, you're at the mercy
0:18:33of whatever debugging abilities you have there,
0:18:34but if you're a programmer and you're interested
0:18:37in playing with shortcuts in something
0:18:39other than a bunch of rounded rectangles
0:18:42on your phone or iPad screen,
0:18:44check out this site, shortcuts.fun.
0:18:46Is that it, plural, yeah, plural, shortcuts.fun.
0:18:49- This is very cool and very impressive,
0:18:52but I agree with you that the language of it,
0:18:56and I don't mean that like JavaScript,
0:18:57but the kind of flow of the way
0:18:59it's been implemented is clunky.
0:19:01This reminds me of, what was it?
0:19:04It was some god awful SharePoint thing I did.
0:19:06What was it, camel C-A-M-L?
0:19:08It doesn't matter.
0:19:09Now I'm miserable just thinking about SharePoint again,
0:19:12but basically a query language where you have to say,
0:19:16okay, I want this thing, and then I want a comparison,
0:19:18and the particular comparison I want is less,
0:19:20and it's exactly what you said before.
0:19:21It's just so clunky, and it's probably a lot less clunky
0:19:26than dragging stuff around on the screen.
0:19:29I mean, I've seen some Federico shortcuts,
0:19:30and they are masterpieces, but they are out of control,
0:19:34and so this does seem like it would help a lot, but oi.
0:19:39- So I've done some research while you guys were talking
0:19:42on the dot fund TLD.
0:19:44I was wondering like what's available there,
0:19:46'cause I'd never heard of this.
0:19:47I was wondering what's available,
0:19:47and how much do these cost,
0:19:50and it turns out that you can register
0:19:53a lot of keywords there that are like dictionary words,
0:19:56but they seem to be priced such that the ones
0:20:00that are better and more desirable are way more expensive.
0:20:04So for instance, coffee.fund is $5,600 per year,
0:20:09and so that to me suggests coffee is a very fun thing,
0:20:12so I wondered what can I get that's less fun than coffee?
0:20:17Now I think podcasts are pretty fun.
0:20:19Podcast.fund is only $2,800 per year,
0:20:22so that's about half the price for podcast.fund
0:20:26compared to coffee.fund.
0:20:27That does seem to suggest we're getting less fun though,
0:20:29so then I tried SharePoint.fund.
0:20:33- Oh, God. - That's only $1,160 per year,
0:20:35so that one has a lot less interest
0:20:37in the fun buyers looking for SharePoint.
0:20:40Then I found the bottom of the barrel.
0:20:42- How is that not SharePoint?
0:20:44That is the bottom of the barrel.
0:20:45- There are things that are less fun than SharePoint.
0:20:47Tied at just $4 a year each are airportsecurity.fund
0:20:52and finally tetanusshot.fund.
0:20:57- Nice.
0:21:00- This is useful podcasting content.
0:21:03I'm glad we're here.
0:21:04- I'm not sure this is an efficient market
0:21:06setting these prices.
0:21:07- We are sponsored this week by Eero.
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0:23:03(upbeat music)
0:23:07- Apple is shutting down Apple Music's
0:23:09rarely used connect feature.
0:23:11So is this the thing where like as an artist,
0:23:13you could go up there and like talk about what you're up to
0:23:15and what tour you're doing
0:23:17and do a little behind the scenes stuff, is that correct?
0:23:19- Was this the thing that Drake introduced
0:23:21or was this before that?
0:23:22- Yeah, yeah, yeah.
0:23:23- I don't remember.
0:23:24- But yeah, it was basically Ping 2.0.
0:23:27It's like here, let's build a social network
0:23:29inside Apple Music so that the artist can post
0:23:31their stuff here and people can follow them.
0:23:34It was basically, you know, the world of music promotion
0:23:36is very heavily tied to other networks,
0:23:39especially like YouTube, Twitter, Facebook.
0:23:41So like it was basically Apple's attempt
0:23:44at trying to capture that world of social promotion
0:23:47of musical stuff and musical bands
0:23:48and fans following musicians into their own thing.
0:23:53And it was, you know, not that different from Ping, really.
0:23:55Ping was like follow your friends.
0:23:57This was follow the bands you like.
0:23:59And I don't think it ever had any traction at all.
0:24:03Even at the very beginning, like they had a few artists
0:24:06on board to start it out and start posting
0:24:08and I tried following some artists I liked
0:24:10but it didn't, it seemed to pretty much die out
0:24:14and have nobody posting there that I followed
0:24:17almost immediately afterwards.
0:24:19I think the reason why social networks like Twitter
0:24:21and Facebook and to some degree in this area, YouTube,
0:24:24the reason these succeed is because like, you know,
0:24:27artists that you follow tend not to have a lot to say
0:24:30most of the time.
0:24:31Like, you know, if you go follow your favorite
0:24:34handful of bands on a social network,
0:24:37if the social network is only them,
0:24:39if you're not seeing anyone else posting,
0:24:41that's gonna be a pretty low volume social network.
0:24:43Whereas the other ones, you're going there all the time
0:24:46for other stuff, for you know, for all sorts
0:24:49of different sources and people to follow
0:24:52or communicate with or you know, post things yourself.
0:24:54There's tons of reasons to go to social networks
0:24:56other than, whatever this is, not App Store Connect,
0:24:58not iTunes Connect, Apple Music Connect, Apple Music Ping,
0:25:02whatever the heck it was called.
0:25:03There's no reason to just keep going to that,
0:25:05to have that be integrated as part of your life
0:25:07that you're constantly going to.
0:25:08Whereas the other ones have other draws
0:25:10that keep people going back and checking in all the time.
0:25:14So I don't think this ever really stood a chance.
0:25:15Even when it was introduced, I don't think anybody
0:25:18was saying like, this is gonna take over the world.
0:25:20I think everyone was basically saying,
0:25:22what are they doing, why are they doing Ping again?
0:25:24And it didn't work out.
0:25:26- This falls under our category of the best time
0:25:28to cancel services after people have forgotten that it exists
0:25:31and this definitely qualifies 'cause I've never read
0:25:33this story, I'd forgotten that it exists.
0:25:35Like, oh yeah, they did that thing.
0:25:37I do think it's actually very different from Ping
0:25:38for exactly the reason you said.
0:25:40Ping was, you know, see what your friends are doing.
0:25:43Like an actual social network that all the participants
0:25:45would both be able to consume the output of other people
0:25:49and produce output for other people in the network.
0:25:52So it was all, it's many to many, right?
0:25:54- And that was fundamentally flawed
0:25:55because it was based on the assumptions
0:25:57that you and your friends have the same taste in music.
0:25:59I guess, you know, nobody has like a fish friend.
0:26:02- It doesn't expect you to be the same taste
0:26:04and it doesn't expect you to be just your friends,
0:26:05but the whole point, it was just regular people
0:26:07to regular people, but Kinect seemed,
0:26:08I don't know if this is entirely true,
0:26:10but it very much seemed, this is, first of all,
0:26:13it was pitch to creators to get them to come.
0:26:16Like, hey, you famous person who makes music,
0:26:18come to our service.
0:26:18All the things that you think you wanna do
0:26:20to communicate to your listeners,
0:26:23we will make it easy for you to do those things.
0:26:25So it made it attractive for them.
0:26:27And then for everyone else, it was like,
0:26:28you sit back and wait to hear from the famous people.
0:26:32So like you said, your band has an album
0:26:34once every few years and then they go on tour
0:26:36and maybe they'll have some behind the scenes stuff,
0:26:37which takes work to produce.
0:26:39Like that was the whole picture of the team.
0:26:40Like your fans are hungry to know, like,
0:26:43how you're in the studio working on your album
0:26:45and what did you have for lunch today?
0:26:46And here's some behind the scenes,
0:26:47look at our lyrics in progress and whatever.
0:26:50You have to encourage the artists to do that.
0:26:52I mean, Apple probably went so far as to let you know,
0:26:55get the ones that are friendly to them to do it,
0:26:57pay them to do it, whatever.
0:26:58Just gotta kickstart the service.
0:27:00And then presumably the fans are sitting there waiting
0:27:02to see something from their band.
0:27:04But that's the ghost, like I said, it's a ghost town
0:27:07because people don't follow that many artists
0:27:09and artists don't have that much to say
0:27:11and that much to update.
0:27:12And the artists aren't gonna invest the time and energy
0:27:14to put highly produced content out to an audience of nobody.
0:27:19All the people are not sitting in,
0:27:21I don't know where you would sit in iTunes application,
0:27:23in the music application on your phone,
0:27:26waiting for the once a month thing to come.
0:27:27No, you're gonna be someplace else.
0:27:29You're gonna be on YouTube looking
0:27:30at the millions of videos.
0:27:31You're gonna be on Twitter, you're gonna be on Facebook.
0:27:33You're going to be where things are actually happening.
0:27:36So no one's going to produce for an audience
0:27:37that isn't there.
0:27:38And it's like, you can't have an audience
0:27:41if there's nothing for them to do except for wait
0:27:43for messages from on high from the famous people.
0:27:46So I think Ping was actually a better,
0:27:49smarter everything connect, which is saying something
0:27:52because Ping was also fundamentally flawed
0:27:53because it's like, why would people,
0:27:55how do you bootstrap this social network
0:27:58when you don't have anything to offer
0:28:00over the million other social networks
0:28:01that are already much better established
0:28:03and where people already have a place to talk about music
0:28:06that they like or send each other links to things
0:28:08that they think are cool.
0:28:09Like they do that on every other social network
0:28:11and Ping didn't have any, you know, all these services,
0:28:14especially when they're tied to iTunes,
0:28:15seem like they were created by an Apple
0:28:17that still thinks it's the king of digital music, you know,
0:28:19'cause of the iTunes store and selling people songs
0:28:21for 99 cents, like that time has passed.
0:28:24But that seems to be the place where Apple thinks
0:28:26they can, they have a lever to bootstrap a social network
0:28:30and they just don't, they just don't have one.
0:28:32Like you can bootstrap a social network
0:28:34with enough money and effort,
0:28:35but iTunes is not an advantage.
0:28:37In fact, at this point, it is probably
0:28:38a very big disadvantage because no one wants
0:28:40to launch that app and the apps on iOS
0:28:45are not particularly well suited to that
0:28:47or neither is any real music player app.
0:28:50Even something like Spotify,
0:28:51which is doing what Apple wishes they could do
0:28:52where people trade Spotify playlists with each other
0:28:54and create them and like even that,
0:28:58Apple is so far behind that and that's a thing
0:29:00that has existed for years.
0:29:01So I kind of feel bad for Apple's efforts in this area,
0:29:06especially since they, like they continue to think that,
0:29:10you know, producing high quality content by famous people
0:29:13is a thing that helps you win.
0:29:14Like, I don't understand how YouTube hasn't convinced them
0:29:17that's not the case.
0:29:18YouTube didn't win by having high quality content
0:29:19by famous people.
0:29:20YouTube won by having people making videos in their basement
0:29:23showing demonstrations of VCRs.
0:29:25Like that's how YouTube won.
0:29:27And I can't imagine Apple producing anything
0:29:31that encourages and fosters and builds on
0:29:33that type of content.
0:29:35But that's, you know, that's apparently the way
0:29:37you build a social network.
0:29:39- All right, moving on.
0:29:41Microsoft Edge, which I guess is a web browser,
0:29:44don't really care, but apparently it's coming to Mac OS.
0:29:46Hooray!
0:29:48Yes, I think.
0:29:49- That's not what this says.
0:29:50You are missing the story here.
0:29:52(laughing)
0:29:54- Now I know that the story is that it's,
0:29:57my understanding of the story is that they're canning
0:29:59their custom rendering engine
0:30:00and they're now forking Chromium, is that right?
0:30:03And using that as a rendering engine,
0:30:05which means basically the entire world
0:30:07is going to be WebKit going forward.
0:30:08It's just a matter of what the particular genesis is
0:30:11of your particular flavor.
0:30:12- Excuse me, Chromium is not WebKit.
0:30:13- Well, no, it is a descendant of WebKit, is it not?
0:30:18- Yeah, so the family tree is getting complicated.
0:30:20- Yeah, exactly, there you go.
0:30:21- You mentioned before you didn't know what Edge was.
0:30:22So Edge is the thing, we all know Internet Explorer.
0:30:27Good old, bad old Internet Explorer.
0:30:30That was a big problem for the whole world for a long time.
0:30:33And many generations of web developers
0:30:37will continue to loathe into their retirement.
0:30:41They will tell stories of IE6 forever.
0:30:43Again, I will tell stories of IE6 forever, I guarantee it.
0:30:46Edge was supposed to be the successor to Internet Explorer
0:30:49'cause Internet Explorer was old and creaky
0:30:50and had to support people's corporate internets forever.
0:30:53And as much as Microsoft tried to improve it,
0:30:56they had increasingly Byzantine backward compatibility hacks
0:31:00involving HTML comments and different modes
0:31:02and a mini language inside the headers to basically say,
0:31:05we won't break your intranet,
0:31:07but if web developers know the right incantations,
0:31:09their standards compliance sites will render
0:31:12almost as good as they do
0:31:13in insert standard compliant browser here.
0:31:15Edge was a successor to that to say, clean sheet,
0:31:18this is not compatible with your stupid IE6 only intranet.
0:31:22It's a modern browser and it's fast.
0:31:24And they spent a while developing that.
0:31:27And then I wish I knew the exact timeline
0:31:29so I could say the number of years
0:31:30they spent on the Edge stuff.
0:31:32But this announcement is,
0:31:33all right, nevermind about the Edge thing.
0:31:34We're gonna make a new web browser
0:31:36and it's gonna be based on Chromium,
0:31:38which is based on Blink, which was based on WebKit,
0:31:41which was based on KHTML and KJS,
0:31:43which are from the KDE Foundation.
0:31:45And if you know what KDE is, you're probably very old.
0:31:48Yeah, so that's quite a lineage of these browsers,
0:31:53but the, and it'll be coming to macOS.
0:31:55So you'll be able to run a Microsoft web browser on your Mac
0:31:58if that's really a thing you wanna do.
0:32:01But the main thing that's got people in a tizzy about this
0:32:06is it kind of reduces the biodiversity
0:32:10of the web browser ecosystem by one,
0:32:14which is a lot when there weren't,
0:32:16how many browsers out there, how many web browsers exist
0:32:20that you can basically view modern websites with?
0:32:24Not many.
0:32:25You can count them on probably one hand,
0:32:28especially if you coalesce the mobile and desktop variants.
0:32:31And so Microsoft apparently is not a big enough company
0:32:36and does not have enough money
0:32:37and is not strategically important enough for them
0:32:39to sustain the development of a separate web browser engine
0:32:44so they're gonna build something on Chromium.
0:32:46Are they gonna fork it?
0:32:47Are they gonna say, in the same way
0:32:48that Blink was forked from WebKit,
0:32:49are they going to take Chromium and run with it?
0:32:52I doubt it because if they could support
0:32:54the continued development of a web engine,
0:32:57a web browser engine, they would do that.
0:32:59I think they want Google and the open source community
0:33:03to continue to advance Chromium
0:33:04and they just want to reap the benefits of that.
0:33:06So I think they will release a browser built on Chromium
0:33:09and when Chromium gets updated,
0:33:11they will incorporate those updates into their browser
0:33:13and they will just keep doing that
0:33:14and basically be mostly out of the business
0:33:18of developing a full featured modern web rendering engine
0:33:23and instead allow that to happen,
0:33:26allow someone else to do that
0:33:27because it's just too much of a pain,
0:33:30it's just too much work to do that as a product
0:33:32which is making me think about,
0:33:34it used to be we talk about how many companies
0:33:37have enough money and technical expertise to be a platform.
0:33:40In the old days, it was like a desktop PC platform.
0:33:44You have to make an operating system
0:33:45and you have to have APIs,
0:33:46you have to have a developer program
0:33:47and you have to support them
0:33:48and you have to get hardware vendors
0:33:49to make the hardware you want
0:33:51or you have to make your own hardware
0:33:52and you have to deal with drivers
0:33:53and you're just like, it takes a lot of time, money
0:33:57and expertise to make a platform
0:34:00and then for that platform to be successful enough
0:34:02in the market and sustain that, it's very difficult.
0:34:04So there's not a lot of say personal computer platforms
0:34:07that exist in a popular today.
0:34:09You've got the Mac, you've got Windows,
0:34:10you've got Linux on a desktop,
0:34:11which is coming anytime soon
0:34:12and various also brands in the mix there.
0:34:17At this point, web browser engines seem like perhaps
0:34:20even more difficult to keep up with than desktop operating
0:34:23systems from a technical perspective
0:34:25because the web changes much faster
0:34:27and it's a sort of a communal thing
0:34:29where if new web standards come out
0:34:31and those web standards are supported by,
0:34:34insert whatever the important browser is
0:34:35that has the most market share
0:34:37and you don't support it on a reasonable timeline,
0:34:40and websites start using it because the browser
0:34:43that has 80% market share supports it,
0:34:45you will be left behind and people will come to say,
0:34:47well, the site doesn't work and insert my favorite browser,
0:34:50I have to go to the market later.
0:34:52That's what happened with Internet Explorer
0:34:54and Chrome and it's, right now even Microsoft thinks,
0:34:59we can't keep up with that.
0:35:00It's just too much, it's too much too fast
0:35:02and actually that's not our strategic strength.
0:35:05It's not an important advantage
0:35:06for us to have our own browser engine
0:35:07so we'll let someone else do it.
0:35:09If everybody does that though,
0:35:11eventually there's only one browser engine,
0:35:14hopefully not controlled by some single company
0:35:17and then we're back to Internet Explorer again
0:35:19where Microsoft and Internet Explorer dictated
0:35:22what could and couldn't be on the web
0:35:23because so many people ran Windows and Internet Explorer 6
0:35:27that even if you made a cool standard compliant site,
0:35:29if it looked like crap in IE6,
0:35:31it was basically invisible
0:35:32to a large portion of the population.
0:35:33So this has a lot of people nervous.
0:35:36I kind of understand why Microsoft bailed on it
0:35:39from an investment perspective
0:35:40but and I do understand exactly how complicated it is
0:35:44to build and sustain a modern web rendering engine
0:35:47but I just don't really have a particularly good feeling
0:35:49about this happening.
0:35:50- Yeah, I already feel like, as you said,
0:35:53Chrome is becoming the de facto standard
0:35:56and that makes me uncomfortable.
0:35:59Like I can't think off the top of my head of that many,
0:36:01or really anything that absolutely requires Chrome
0:36:04but certainly Google's own web properties
0:36:07work a lot better in Chrome, which makes sense.
0:36:09But there's a handful of sites, again,
0:36:10I wish I could think of an example
0:36:12that just don't work properly in Safari
0:36:14and do work better in Chrome.
0:36:15And a lot of people seem to really like Chrome.
0:36:17I don't particularly care for it.
0:36:20It doesn't really work for me in a few different ways
0:36:22that really don't matter.
0:36:24But I am not keen on the idea of Chrome
0:36:28kind of getting even more cemented as the de facto standard.
0:36:34And yeah, it's all sort of WebKit behind the scenes
0:36:38but there's more differences here
0:36:39than I'm comfortable with already
0:36:41and that just makes me uncomfortable.
0:36:42- Yeah, the JavaScript engines are totally separate
0:36:44because Chrome has the V8 engine
0:36:48and Apple has what the hell is there called?
0:36:52- Is it Nitro, is that a thing?
0:36:54- There's a bunch of code names for the faster versions.
0:36:57But anyway, they have their own
0:36:57and they're separate from each other.
0:36:58JavaScript core is I think the framework.
0:37:01Anyway, someone posted in the chat room
0:37:03an article I read earlier today,
0:37:04an article, a Hacker News comment
0:37:06that shows just how fraught the world
0:37:08of browser development is.
0:37:12So this is Microsoft back when they were doing
0:37:14their Edge thing, they're having a problem
0:37:17where YouTube, if you tried to go to YouTube
0:37:20and play a video in Edge, all of a sudden
0:37:23the sort of hardware accelerated efficient
0:37:26GPU driven video path that was nicest to your battery
0:37:30stopped working in Edge.
0:37:32And when Microsoft's browser team investigated it
0:37:34they found there was like an invisible div,
0:37:36like a div with some transparency
0:37:38or a hidden div or whatever covering the video.
0:37:42And their acceleration framework thought
0:37:44that it couldn't accelerate that
0:37:45because there was an element in front of it.
0:37:46Like it thought that it couldn't use the fast path
0:37:49so it fell back to like the less efficient rendering mode.
0:37:52But that didn't happen in Chrome.
0:37:55Chrome was apparently smart enough to know that,
0:37:56oh yeah, there's something in front of it
0:37:58but use the accelerated path anyway
0:37:59but because the thing in front of it is invisible
0:38:01or is zero present opacity or whatever.
0:38:04And the nefarious interpretation of this is that,
0:38:07aha, Google is intentionally making changes to YouTube,
0:38:10which Google owns, to make Microsoft's browsers worse
0:38:12because Google was touting how battery efficient Chrome is.
0:38:17Look at us when we, which is ironic considering
0:38:20Chrome is a battery pig compared to Safari
0:38:22but everything's relative.
0:38:24So if you have a PC and you're not running a Mac
0:38:27and you're trying to watch YouTube video,
0:38:29you do it in Chrome, it hurts your battery
0:38:31much less than if you did it in Edge.
0:38:33And so they're like, look at this Chrome,
0:38:36Google taking advantage of the fact that they own YouTube
0:38:39to crap on someone else's browser
0:38:41to make Chrome more dominant.
0:38:42And that could be what happens.
0:38:43That's the thing that happens in technology all the time,
0:38:45doing stuff to make your competitor's product look bad.
0:38:49But a more benign explanation is that YouTube
0:38:53and many other web properties have to do all sorts of things
0:38:55to either defeat ad blocking or defeat bots or both,
0:38:59like all sorts of obfuscation techniques
0:39:02because the web is a very adversarial environment
0:39:04and Google knows this.
0:39:06People are constantly trying to game Google,
0:39:08people are, you know, lots of things are coming by
0:39:10trying to scrape content or be automated
0:39:12and sometimes you have to do stuff in the markup
0:39:14that doesn't make any sense
0:39:15because it breaks some other adversary
0:39:18and might have also broken Edge HTML at the same time
0:39:21because its optimization didn't understand
0:39:23that that thing was invisible.
0:39:24So there are also plausible,
0:39:26and again, I'm not saying this is what happened,
0:39:27but plausible benign explanations.
0:39:29So the bottom line is if you are Microsoft
0:39:32making Edge HTML, it doesn't really matter
0:39:34whether it was they're trying to mess up your browser
0:39:37or they're trying to fight bots or something,
0:39:40you have to be aware at all times,
0:39:42how is our browser doing with the latest version
0:39:44of insert popular site that we don't control?
0:39:46Oh, it looks like it used to work great on that site
0:39:49but now it doesn't.
0:39:49Quickly figure out why it doesn't work
0:39:51and fix our rendering engine so it does.
0:39:53And that's what it means to make a web browser.
0:39:55Like if your web browser works worse in YouTube,
0:39:59you can't ignore that.
0:40:00You have to have people, a very large engineering team,
0:40:03forget about adding features,
0:40:04just all the time making sure
0:40:05that all the popular websites that must work
0:40:07and must work well,
0:40:09continue to work and continue to work well.
0:40:11And those websites are changing all the time
0:40:13and they're not consulting you when they change them.
0:40:14They're making the changes that they need to make,
0:40:16whether they're trying to intentionally mess you up
0:40:18or they're just doing something totally unrelated
0:40:19that incidentally messes you up
0:40:21because what they're doing seems inexplicable.
0:40:23But again, many inexplicable things happen on the web
0:40:25for purposes other than screwing other web browser vendors.
0:40:29That's just a tiny glimpse of what it would take
0:40:30to maintain a web browser engine.
0:40:33And if you don't think it's strategically important
0:40:36for you to do that, why would you waste all that money?
0:40:39Thus far, Apple continues to think
0:40:40it's strategically important for them
0:40:41to have their own web browser engine.
0:40:43I don't think they're ever going to change their mind
0:40:44about that because it seems like that battle
0:40:47was won a long time ago.
0:40:48And now that they have their own browser engine,
0:40:50they can be much more battery efficient with it
0:40:52on all their portable devices,
0:40:53which is super important to Apple
0:40:54because phones is their whole biz
0:40:55and other portable products.
0:40:57And I think they like the control and yada yada.
0:40:59And you can see Google and Apple
0:41:02and Firefox, the Mozilla Foundation, whatever,
0:41:04duking it out over standards,
0:41:06both inside and outside the formal standards process.
0:41:08So they're all, and Microsoft's in that mix too.
0:41:11So everyone still has a stake in this,
0:41:13but Microsoft's sort of bowing out
0:41:16and not getting behind the Google side of things,
0:41:19but saying of all the,
0:41:21because they could have just picked WebKit, right?
0:41:23They could have picked WebKit
0:41:24and JavaScript core or whatever, but they didn't.
0:41:27And just basically saying, we'll use what you do.
0:41:30You just do what you do and we'll,
0:41:31I'm assuming Microsoft will continue to participate
0:41:33in W3C standardization process and put their 2 cents in,
0:41:37but they're just gonna take Google's work.
0:41:40And so now it is Google,
0:41:42which already had by far the dominant market share
0:41:45of web browsing across the entire world.
0:41:48And then in a tiny little corner off to the side,
0:41:51Apple with its whatever it is, 20% worldwide market share,
0:41:55but a much larger percentage of people
0:41:57who buy things through the web browser.
0:41:58So they still have that power base to work from.
0:42:00So I don't know, I'm a little nervous about this.
0:42:04I'll try Edge when it's on the Mac,
0:42:06but kind of like Firefox,
0:42:08I don't think that the change is gonna stick
0:42:11unless it does something pretty amazing.
0:42:13- I gotta tell you, I do not miss doing web development.
0:42:16- Nope. - It was fun for a while,
0:42:18but I do not miss it at all.
0:42:21- I mean, every field of development,
0:42:23you have to deal with somebody's BS,
0:42:25but it feels like with web development,
0:42:27you had to deal with a lot of people's BS
0:42:30and it never really ended.
0:42:31In fact, it only seemed to increase over time.
0:42:34We thought, okay, once IE6 is out of the picture,
0:42:36everything will be easier.
0:42:38And instead, it just got harder in different ways.
0:42:41And now what modern web development is,
0:42:44certain things are very easy,
0:42:46but in general, the entire field as a whole
0:42:49has not gotten easier.
0:42:50It's just way more complicated,
0:42:52and there's so much more that you, quote,
0:42:55have to do and use and know about and learn,
0:42:59and it seems like it's accelerating
0:43:00like how quickly things change
0:43:01and how much stuff you have to know
0:43:03to be a working web programmer in most of the industry.
0:43:07It's just nuts.
0:43:09- It's kind of like programming in the early days
0:43:11where you're just writing some sort of batch job
0:43:14in Fortran or something on a high-performance computer
0:43:17that just does some operations on a bunch of numbers.
0:43:19And today, to be an iOS developer,
0:43:21you need to know so much more than they needed to know.
0:43:23They needed to know how to write to one machine,
0:43:25and they needed to know some basics,
0:43:26and the API was small, and you could do it now.
0:43:28In order to be an iOS developer,
0:43:29you have to know all the stuff about using the IDE
0:43:31and the million APIs and everything about design
0:43:34and layout, and it's just so much harder.
0:43:35It's because we make better programs.
0:43:37We make more complicated programs.
0:43:38So in web development, things are better
0:43:40if what you wanted to make was a website
0:43:43that you could have made in 1993.
0:43:44You could make that today so much better
0:43:46with so much less work,
0:43:47but you don't want to make a 1993 website.
0:43:49You want to make a modern website,
0:43:50and modern websites, guess what?
0:43:52Have way more features and do way more things,
0:43:54and so you have to learn more APIs,
0:43:56and it's just scaled up.
0:43:59So I think the standards were to get IE6 out of there
0:44:02and to basically try to get everyone
0:44:04on some semblance of the same page
0:44:06and get basic support for things
0:44:08that everyone knows are good
0:44:10but that Microsoft was preventing us
0:44:11from using for years, like basic CSS.
0:44:14That's so boring, no one even talks about it anymore.
0:44:17We're like 17 battles on from that,
0:44:19but the stuff that we fought the battles over and won,
0:44:22you can use that right now, and it is very pleasant to use,
0:44:25but just the table stakes have been raised.
0:44:29You can't even participate in the web at the highest level
0:44:33if you don't know how to use all these other things,
0:44:36and that's where everyone's fighting and working
0:44:38at the bleeding edge to have the coolest,
0:44:41most advanced website.
0:44:42The nice thing is that if you don't want to have
0:44:44a cool advanced website,
0:44:45but you just want to have a bunch of static pages
0:44:48with words on them and pictures and stuff,
0:44:50it's so much more pleasant now to do something like that.
0:44:53There is a little bit more you need to know,
0:44:54because you didn't have to worry about responsive
0:44:55back in the day, because what did that mean?
0:44:57Who's gonna be, you look at a website and your phone,
0:44:59so you don't have to worry about that,
0:45:00and you just gotta make sure you support
0:45:02the smallest computer screen at 640 pixels wide
0:45:05or whatever the hell, which ironically is narrower
0:45:07than most phones these days.
0:45:09But if you just want to do a simple website,
0:45:12the web is incredibly pleasant today,
0:45:14but yeah, if you want to make YouTube or Gmail or whatever,
0:45:18it's incredibly complicated.
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0:46:57(upbeat music)
0:47:01- Over the last week or two,
0:47:04there has been a pitch from NPR
0:47:07for something that's rad.
0:47:10It's called remote audio data,
0:47:12and this is the pitch directly from rad.npr.org.
0:47:17Remote audio data measures podcast listening
0:47:20across a range of participating clients and platforms,
0:47:22aggregating the data in publishers analytics endpoint.
0:47:25No thanks.
0:47:26I mean, what, huh?
0:47:28What is this about?
0:47:29Marco, tell me about this.
0:47:31- Yeah, this is, I mean,
0:47:32I guess I should be careful here
0:47:34because I'm in this field
0:47:36and it's involving other people who are in this field
0:47:38and everything else.
0:47:39So, you know, I don't wanna like be rude or anything,
0:47:42but this is a spec that NPR developed
0:47:46to get more analytics in podcasts.
0:47:50And I honestly don't think we're gonna hear about it at all
0:47:55past about this week or so for the simple reason,
0:47:58and again, I'm not saying this to be mean,
0:48:00for the simple reason that there is absolutely no reason
0:48:04for podcast app developers to implement this at all.
0:48:09The only support I think I expected to get client-side
0:48:12is from NPR One, which is their own app,
0:48:16and maybe down the road, Pocket Casts,
0:48:18which they, through a consortium of something complicated,
0:48:21they do own it, but Pocket Casts has said publicly
0:48:24they're not planning on adding support to it.
0:48:25So I don't see any reason why app makers, including Apple,
0:48:30which is the big one that matters the most,
0:48:33would implement this.
0:48:34So here's what RAD is.
0:48:36So the fundamental problem that they're trying to solve,
0:48:40right now in podcasting,
0:48:41the only way you can really measure your audience
0:48:44is either by number of hits to the RSS feed,
0:48:47which is incredibly unreliable
0:48:49and not very relevant for podcasts,
0:48:51but the bigger one that people usually use
0:48:52is number of downloads that an average episode gets,
0:48:55or some of the bigger shows will say
0:48:57number of monthly downloads that the show tends to get total,
0:49:00including all of its archive downloads.
0:49:02And so that's kinda how you sell your ads,
0:49:06based on, well, our show tends to get X downloads
0:49:09per episode, and so if you buy an ad for this episode,
0:49:12you are likely to get about X downloads.
0:49:14Now, there's a number of problems with this,
0:49:17and limitations of this.
0:49:19First of all, measuring a download is itself a little tricky,
0:49:23and there's all sorts of efforts
0:49:24that have been made over the years
0:49:25to try to standardize what that means,
0:49:27or what counts, what doesn't count.
0:49:30There's been lots of complexity in the real world
0:49:32that have made it harder.
0:49:33So for instance, a download is not just a quote hit
0:49:38or a request to the file, because even since like,
0:49:41forever ago, since like desktop iTunes,
0:49:44sometimes clients would make multiple requests
0:49:46for the same file, taking different ranges of the file
0:49:49for each request to basically run like four download segments
0:49:52in parallel to speed up the download.
0:49:54So you kinda have to, like if you see multiple
0:49:58download attempts from the same IP address,
0:50:01if they're for different ranges of the file,
0:50:03you might have to conclude, well, that's one download, really.
0:50:07But there's lots of situations where multiple people
0:50:12are sharing one IP address.
0:50:14So you can't just say that like one IP
0:50:17has at most one download that's attributed to it.
0:50:21Also, in the modern world, people download
0:50:24from their mobile phones, and so they can roam
0:50:27between cell networks and have different IPs
0:50:29at different times of the day.
0:50:31So you might have 10 people behind one IP,
0:50:35or you might have one person who's roaming
0:50:37between four different IPs throughout the same day,
0:50:40trying to stream the same podcast bit by bit.
0:50:42So it's actually not incredibly accurate
0:50:45to measure downloads.
0:50:46And then the other problem with downloads
0:50:48is that you don't know if they actually listen
0:50:52to the podcast.
0:50:53All you know is that these people who you can sort of measure
0:50:58download the podcast, for the most part, we think.
0:51:01And then you can assume, based on that, well,
0:51:04it seems like most of them listen to it, I guess, you know?
0:51:07And for a while, that was pretty much
0:51:09the only information we had, is like,
0:51:11we can see people are downloading it,
0:51:13and our advertisers who advertise with us,
0:51:16they'll put in coupon codes or special links
0:51:18that we read out, and people are using those codes.
0:51:21So it seems like people are hearing the ads.
0:51:23So it seems like we have an audience.
0:51:25Or people write in, they say they listen to the show.
0:51:27You can have people try to take a survey,
0:51:28but that never works.
0:51:29So everything is based in podcast metrics.
0:51:32Everything is based on estimations.
0:51:35Now, a big thing happened a few months back.
0:51:38After years of big podcast producers campaigning Apple,
0:51:43they convinced Apple Podcasts to open up something
0:51:46called Podcast Analytics.
0:51:48And Apple has the iTunes directory,
0:51:50and Apple also has the biggest podcast player
0:51:53in the Apple Podcasts app, which has something
0:51:56like 60% to 70% market share, depending on who you ask.
0:51:59So it's like the big dog.
0:52:00It is the only big player that matters in podcasting.
0:52:02Everything else is way smaller by comparison.
0:52:04Spotify matters a lot.
0:52:06They're estimated to have like 5% to 7%, something like that.
0:52:09Apple has like 60% to 70%.
0:52:11It's a big deal.
0:52:13Apple finally agreed with podcasters a few months back,
0:52:16and they introduced Podcast Analytics,
0:52:18which in typical Apple fashion is not
0:52:21personal, creepy level type stuff.
0:52:24It's very privacy respectful, aggregate stats,
0:52:28and only for people who opt in with Apple's global
0:52:31opt-in thing during the iOS setup thing.
0:52:33It's very anonymous, what you get from them,
0:52:35but you are able to see basic trends like
0:52:39how many people who download the,
0:52:41first of all, how many people download it,
0:52:43how many of those people actually listen to it,
0:52:46and then how far into each episode they listen,
0:52:49and you can see what parts they skip over.
0:52:51My position basically is that's plenty.
0:52:54That's more data, that's way more data than we had before.
0:52:58And what it showed us, honestly,
0:52:59was that all of our assumptions have basically been true,
0:53:02that most people who download it listen to it,
0:53:06most people who listen to it listen most of the way through,
0:53:09and most people don't skip ads.
0:53:11That's kind of what we've figured out over the years
0:53:13based on how ads performed and everything,
0:53:15and so that seemed to be the case.
0:53:16And now we have really good data
0:53:19from the biggest podcast app by far in the world
0:53:22that supports that theory that,
0:53:24yeah, you know what, podcasts are fine.
0:53:27The downloads are mostly being measured accurately,
0:53:30they're mostly counting,
0:53:31people are hearing the ads, et cetera.
0:53:33But there's a lot of big publishers now of podcasts,
0:53:35and they really want to have their own,
0:53:38first of all, they want more, they want much more data.
0:53:41And then they also want more control over that data,
0:53:44and they have all these backend systems,
0:53:47there's all these ad platforms.
0:53:49There are things like dynamic ad insertion,
0:53:51which we've talked about before,
0:53:52where they inject ads at certain timestamps of the file
0:53:55at download time for each user
0:53:57that can be locally tailored or whatever.
0:53:59That's why if you listen to big popular podcasts,
0:54:01you might hear a local car ad or something like that.
0:54:04That's why that's happening.
0:54:05When you're injecting ads at download time,
0:54:08and those ads might be different lengths,
0:54:10a bunch of stuff breaks.
0:54:12Things like sync in a podcast app between multiple devices.
0:54:15Things like sharing timestamps
0:54:17that all of a sudden can't be guaranteed
0:54:19to be pointed to the same part of the file
0:54:20because the ad that came before them
0:54:22might be different durations
0:54:23based on when you downloaded it.
0:54:24Things like range requests and resuming downloads break
0:54:28because subsequent requests at the same URL
0:54:31can get different durations.
0:54:33You might make a request for the first chunk of a file,
0:54:36then get interrupted.
0:54:37You go into a subway tunnel or something.
0:54:39You come out of the tunnel.
0:54:40It makes a second request for the second half of the file,
0:54:42and you have a little gap in the middle of the file,
0:54:44or you have a part that gets repeated
0:54:46because it's being served a different duration file.
0:54:49All these platforms are out there that try to do this.
0:54:53None of them do a great technical job
0:54:55of actually inserting the ads.
0:54:56They usually ignore basic HTTP caching
0:54:59and ETag types of directives,
0:55:02and they typically violate the MP3 standard
0:55:05in a number of ways.
0:55:07So lots of weird stuff happens
0:55:08with podcast app seeking and everything else.
0:55:10It's a mess.
0:55:10But anyway, the bigger problem with dynamic ad insertion
0:55:13in the context of this conversation
0:55:15is that it breaks the relevance of Apple Analytics.
0:55:18If the podcasters wanna know how many people listen
0:55:20to a particular ad, Apple's aggregate stats
0:55:23of all people who downloaded that episode
0:55:25aren't going to really give them that information
0:55:27because that particular ad wasn't necessarily served
0:55:31at the same timestamp every time
0:55:33and wasn't served for all downloads of that same file
0:55:35because they might run an ad for two days,
0:55:38and then the rest of the week,
0:55:39they put a different ad in that spot or whatever.
0:55:41So what the big podcasters want is a system
0:55:45that they control completely,
0:55:47that they can have individual tracking of everything
0:55:51integrated with their ad servers
0:55:52so that they can tell exactly how many people
0:55:55listened to a podcast through certain timestamps,
0:55:57through certain ranges of time.
0:56:00They wanna know whether they made it to the end,
0:56:01whether they made it most of the way to the end,
0:56:03and of course, they really wanna know
0:56:04how many people heard how many ads
0:56:06and exactly which ads and when.
0:56:08Now, this introduces a number of privacy concerns.
0:56:11So in the old system,
0:56:14the system that we are all still operating in,
0:56:17the only information they have on you is your IP address.
0:56:20When you fetch the file, they see your IP
0:56:23because that's how internet transfers work.
0:56:25You make a request to their server,
0:56:27they see your IP, simple as that.
0:56:29And the reality is there are services out there
0:56:32and ad networks out there where they on the backend
0:56:35can submit your IP to a web service
0:56:38and learn everything about you.
0:56:39No, this is true.
0:56:41So already, the publishers that want to be gross
0:56:45about your privacy are being gross about your privacy.
0:56:47They're already able to with your IP address.
0:56:49They're able to, with reasonable certainty,
0:56:52correlate your IP address with other data sources
0:56:55and services out there to figure out exactly
0:56:56who you are if they want to,
0:56:58and use that for advertising purposes.
0:56:59They absolutely do that.
0:57:00They will try their hardest to do that,
0:57:03and that's the reality of big publishing businesses.
0:57:07So to some degree, the cat's out of the bag, right?
0:57:11So, but just because they can do that
0:57:15doesn't mean that I wanna make it easy on them
0:57:16to do anything else.
0:57:18I have been very adamant in Overcast,
0:57:20and just as a podcast listener,
0:57:22against any other attempts to track any more data.
0:57:26I think on a number of levels, it would be bad.
0:57:29There's the personal privacy level
0:57:31where it's just kind of gross,
0:57:33that I think listeners don't need that and don't want that.
0:57:37There's the kind of infrastructure level
0:57:40of like I don't want other entities
0:57:44telling me what to do in my app
0:57:46and what I need to support in my app,
0:57:49'cause podcasting right now is wonderful.
0:57:51It's open, it's an RSS feed with MP3s in it.
0:57:54It's pretty basic.
0:57:56You download those MP3s,
0:57:57and you can do whatever you want with them.
0:57:58You can play them, you can not play them.
0:58:00You can do whatever you want with them as the player,
0:58:03and as the listener, and there's no,
0:58:05the contract basically ends between the podcast maker and you
0:58:10at the point of download.
0:58:11Once you download it, you have full control,
0:58:14and they have no visibility.
0:58:16And I like to keep it that way.
0:58:18But anyway, so that's not what the big publishers want.
0:58:23And I should clarify too,
0:58:24while it is true that many of the publishers
0:58:27of the largest podcasts in the world want things like this,
0:58:31most of the podcasts that you, dear listener,
0:58:34probably listen to, like if you listen to this show,
0:58:37you probably listen to other tech shows.
0:58:39You probably listen to other indie shows,
0:58:40smaller shows that are produced by people
0:58:42and not big corporations.
0:58:44Chances are the people who make the shows you want,
0:58:48you listen to, don't want any of this.
0:58:50Like, we don't want any of this.
0:58:52Our friends over at Relay and Five by Five
0:58:54and all these other networks,
0:58:55they don't want any of this either.
0:58:56Like, indie podcast makers don't want any more tracking
0:59:00and dynamic ad insertion and other BS.
0:59:03We don't want that.
0:59:03We don't need it.
0:59:05Our ads sell fine, our podcast does fine.
0:59:08We are very satisfied with the status quo.
0:59:10We don't need any of this garbage.
0:59:12So this is only a request from like the biggest,
0:59:16biggest, biggest podcast makers
0:59:18because that's what they do.
0:59:20When you get to a certain size,
0:59:21you can start thinking that way
0:59:22and you start getting data people on board
0:59:23and growth people and this kind of stuff happens.
0:59:26So anyway, what the RAD standard is at a technical level
0:59:30is simply an ID3 tag that includes a JSON bundle,
0:59:34you know, JSON dictionary inside of it.
0:59:37And it's basically a series of timestamps
0:59:41and URLs to hit with arbitrary dictionary,
0:59:45you know, key value pairs to hit those URLs with
0:59:47when a user hits those timestamps in the file.
0:59:50So what you're supposed to do if you implement RAD
0:59:52on the client side is when you hit certain timestamps
0:59:55given in the file, make an app-bound network request
0:59:57to the URL that is provided by the podcaster.
1:00:01Once you have that, you have user-level tracking.
1:00:03You have individual tracking.
1:00:04It's as simple as that.
1:00:05The spec has certain privacy promises
1:00:09that aren't actually fillable in practice.
1:00:12The spec requires apps to make outbound requests
1:00:17to arbitrary URLs that are specified in an ID3 tag
1:00:20in the file that was downloaded.
1:00:22So even if the player doesn't provide like a user identifier
1:00:26the download server already has your IP
1:00:30and it can serve you a dynamically generated file.
1:00:34So it can serve you a file that has dynamically inserted
1:00:37a unique set of URLs just for you to be called back to.
1:00:41So it can track you through multiple IPs
1:00:43as you run throughout the day.
1:00:44It can see exactly how far you,
1:00:47user that started out at this IP address
1:00:49which they might be able to resolve to you, KC list,
1:00:52that's all trackable then.
1:00:54Once you know which copy of that file you serve
1:00:59to which user, which you can do by just a dynamic URLs,
1:01:02then you can track a user from start to finish.
1:01:05You can see exactly what they do
1:01:07and you can build a network of knowledge
1:01:09of what IPs they tend to use at what time
1:01:11they tend to use them and then you can track users
1:01:14between shows over time.
1:01:16So the privacy angle of this is pretty rough.
1:01:21There's pretty much no privacy guarantee here
1:01:24and the fact is even if a publisher now says,
1:01:28oh well we won't do that, the fact is it's ad tech.
1:01:32People will do it eventually.
1:01:33If you won't do it, someone else will.
1:01:35Like it'll happen.
1:01:35So the only protection against ad tech is to block it
1:01:39completely and so on the privacy front
1:01:44and on the feature front, I see no reason at all
1:01:49why podcast apps would implement this
1:01:52and the good news about the world of podcasts
1:01:55is that what are they gonna do about it?
1:01:58Like right now, if I implement, so suppose I say,
1:02:03no I'm never implementing this
1:02:05which I did because I won't.
1:02:08And so suppose a podcast app says that.
1:02:11A podcast publisher, like a big publisher
1:02:14cannot then block Overcast from downloading those files
1:02:19because a podcast is beautifully an RSS feed
1:02:22full of MP3 files or links to MP3 files
1:02:25and if they somehow try to lock that down
1:02:29any further than that, Apple Podcasts can't play it
1:02:33and they lose their entire market.
1:02:35So as long as Apple doesn't do stuff like this,
1:02:40then we're pretty safe and I cannot possibly see Apple
1:02:45implementing this for all the privacy reasons.
1:02:47There's no way and there's nothing in it for them.
1:02:50So there's basically no incentive that anybody could provide
1:02:55that would make this worth implementing on a player side.
1:02:58Unless they back up a truckload of money into my driveway
1:03:00and buy Overcast, I don't think there's any path to this
1:03:05on the client side.
1:03:06There's no reason for clients to do it
1:03:07and there's lots of reasons for clients not to do it.
1:03:10Number one, being creepy, number two, GDPR liabilities.
1:03:15Like there's huge liabilities.
1:03:17Like if I am taking your behavioral data
1:03:21and sending it, basically phoning home
1:03:24and telling any arbitrary URL what you are doing
1:03:27as you're listening,
1:03:28that's a pretty huge security violation,
1:03:30or privacy violation I should say.
1:03:33And while it technically might not be
1:03:36personally identifiable information by the GDPR definition,
1:03:40it's still real creepy and it's still a liability
1:03:42and it's still something that like,
1:03:44if your users found out that you were doing that,
1:03:47I bet they'd be upset about that.
1:03:48I bet that's the kind of thing you would want your users
1:03:50not to know about.
1:03:51And typically, it's a good idea to minimize
1:03:54those kinds of things in your business.
1:03:56If you have a lot of those things, you're doing things wrong.
1:04:00So I see the problem they're trying to solve with RAD.
1:04:05I don't think it's as big of a problem
1:04:08as they seem to think it is.
1:04:09This is not a problem that most podcasters
1:04:11that I listen to or know have.
1:04:14And the solution they've come up with,
1:04:17I fail to see why any app would ever integrate that
1:04:20and there's a lot of reasons why we shouldn't.
1:04:23- So I have a couple of thoughts about this.
1:04:26I guess starting with what you just said,
1:04:29I don't understand what,
1:04:32why would you do this?
1:04:35- I don't know.
1:04:36- What is in it for anyone other than NPR?
1:04:40Why does anyone, as a podcast app,
1:04:44as a podcast client developer,
1:04:46why would you spend the time to do this?
1:04:48What's in it for you?
1:04:50I just don't understand.
1:04:52- The NPR website has answers to all your questions.
1:04:55- Yeah, so what's the answer?
1:04:56- Yeah, so to their credit, they did put up a page,
1:04:59basically like a fact to explain this.
1:05:01But this is their best chance.
1:05:04They write this website.
1:05:05It's their best chance to present their best case.
1:05:09And so they address everybody.
1:05:10So what does RAD mean to me?
1:05:12If you're an app developer,
1:05:14why should you implement this spec?
1:05:16Which is, that's one constituency.
1:05:18They spend one short paragraph
1:05:21and basically say RAD will allow publishers
1:05:23to receive organized enhanced listening metrics
1:05:25and editorial blah, blah, blah, blah, right.
1:05:26So I am an app implementer.
1:05:28You've told me that RAD will allow publishers
1:05:31to receive a bunch of new information.
1:05:33Okay, I'm still waiting for the part
1:05:35where I'm an app developer and it's appealing to me.
1:05:38It reduces the need for each platform
1:05:39to have a detailed analytics dashboard.
1:05:41Am I a platform?
1:05:44Do I have a-- - Again, not our problem.
1:05:46- Do I have a detailed analytics dashboard?
1:05:48I just have an app that plays podcasts.
1:05:51I don't have a detail.
1:05:52I don't want a detailed analytics page.
1:05:54It allows for information to be aggregated
1:05:56in a third party location.
1:05:58Do I care about aggregating this information?
1:06:00- And why is that an advantage?
1:06:02That's not necessarily an advantage.
1:06:03- RAD does not track specific user behavior.
1:06:06Instead RAD uses a session ID blah, blah, blah,
1:06:08the SDA credit to be lightweight, blah, blah.
1:06:10So they say it'll be easy
1:06:11to integrate into your application.
1:06:12So they have an entire paragraph,
1:06:13which as far as I can tell,
1:06:14doesn't contain any piece of information
1:06:16that would say why I should implement this spec
1:06:17unless I really, really want to have
1:06:22detailed analytics dashboard,
1:06:23but I don't want to implement it myself.
1:06:25I want to like have a third party one,
1:06:26like it's an industry standard or whatever.
1:06:28So speculatively in some future
1:06:30where everyone implemented RAD,
1:06:32there could be this dashboard that lets you look
1:06:34at your RAD reported information
1:06:36or provide the server side for whatever.
1:06:38And it allows publishers to receive
1:06:41organized enhanced listening metrics.
1:06:43And I suppose if you are a publisher
1:06:44and you want organized enhanced listening metrics
1:06:46and you have your own app, maybe you would do that.
1:06:48Then it says, what if you're a podcast creator?
1:06:50What if you, you know, you make podcasts?
1:06:53Why should you use RAD?
1:06:54So, and this is an even shorter paragraph.
1:06:57And I think probably an even less power
1:07:00because that was the best case right there.
1:07:01If you're like an app developer,
1:07:02like they go to the publishing thing or whatever.
1:07:04Anyway, why should you use RAD if you're a podcast creator?
1:07:08The metrics will help you better understand your audience
1:07:10across a range of platforms.
1:07:12You'll be able to produce more informed, engaging content
1:07:15and over time develop improved data
1:07:17for your sponsors and advertisers.
1:07:18So basically they're saying, if you knew more
1:07:20about exactly what your listeners were doing,
1:07:22you'd be able to make better content.
1:07:24'Cause if you're like, if you know, okay,
1:07:26this is the point where they hit pause
1:07:28and a whole bunch of people hit pause here,
1:07:29a whole bunch of people stop listening at this point.
1:07:31I'll know whatever we did there, let's do something different.
1:07:33Like you can just get inside the heads of your audience
1:07:35and use that as a direct feedback loop
1:07:37to produce better content.
1:07:40And also develop improved data
1:07:42for your sponsors and advertisers.
1:07:43Again, saying sponsors and advertisers want this
1:07:45and if you give it to them, it will be better data for them.
1:07:49But that's the whole pitch that if you knew more
1:07:51about your audience, you could make a better podcast.
1:07:53Which on its face seems like, okay,
1:07:55well maybe that makes some kind of sense.
1:07:56But on the other hand, you think about it like,
1:07:57well, but does it?
1:07:59Like is the information I'm gonna get about people,
1:08:02you know, in terms of what timestamps and everything,
1:08:04really going to help me?
1:08:05Like, is that the best way to create good,
1:08:08you know, content, good entertainment, right?
1:08:11To be able, it's kind of like those things
1:08:13where they, they parodied on the Simpsons
1:08:15with an episode that you guys might've seen.
1:08:16But like, and based on a real thing
1:08:19where they would show like test audiences,
1:08:22something, a movie or a television show,
1:08:24and the members of the test audience
1:08:26would have some kind of device or feedback,
1:08:28real time feedback, like a dial that they can turn
1:08:30to say you like this, you don't like it or whatever.
1:08:33Some sort of way to give real time feedback
1:08:35about how they're feeling about what it is
1:08:37that they're watching.
1:08:38And it would all be like, it would be aggregated
1:08:40into a graph, so like a boring part of the Oscars
1:08:42would come on and all the lines would dip down,
1:08:44and then like a cool part would come on
1:08:46and all the lines would go back up.
1:08:47You ever see that type of thing?
1:08:49- Mm-hmm, mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
1:08:50- And it's like, as if they expect either in real time
1:08:55for you to be reacting to this, oh, all the dials went down,
1:08:57everybody be funnier, or like, next time we do the Oscars,
1:09:01we won't do a segment like that because nobody liked it.
1:09:03Like it seems to make sense, but if that's,
1:09:06Marlon talks about this a lot on his various podcasts.
1:09:09That's not really the best way to improve
1:09:11the quality of your content is to micromanage
1:09:14the psyche of every person consuming it
1:09:15because there's too many assumptions.
1:09:18The main one being that the people who are currently
1:09:20listening and giving you feedback are the audience
1:09:21that you want or that represent the only audience
1:09:24that could ever exist for whatever it is you're doing.
1:09:27Nevermind that this is not like that little dial
1:09:28of happy and sad, it's merely like,
1:09:31when did they hit each timestamp or whatever?
1:09:32It's really geared towards, did they hear the ad or not,
1:09:35which has some relevance to you as a podcast creator,
1:09:37but it probably won't help you make your actual podcast
1:09:40better unless your podcast is 100% ads,
1:09:42in which case maybe it will help you.
1:09:44And then finally, if you're a brand/sponsor/advertiser,
1:09:48what does RAD provide access to and all the information
1:09:51they want about download, stop, starts, ad listings,
1:09:53so on and so forth.
1:09:54So this page where they explain why you would want to,
1:09:59why RAD, where does RAD fit into your life?
1:10:02If you're making a podcast play rap, why would you do it?
1:10:06If you make your own podcast, why would you want it?
1:10:08And if you're a listener of podcasts,
1:10:09why would you want it?
1:10:11And it's not a really particularly compelling case.
1:10:15And so, yeah, I don't,
1:10:17it's one of those things where the way stuff like this
1:10:22actually comes to pass is not because of the cases
1:10:25made successfully to all constituencies,
1:10:26it's because one particular consistency has all the power
1:10:29and they also reap all the benefits and they just do it.
1:10:33So if Apple were an advertising company like Google
1:10:36and they were the dominant podcast platform,
1:10:39they would do this immediately
1:10:40and it would become the de facto standard
1:10:42because the person who could benefit most from it
1:10:44has the most power and they just do it.
1:10:46And it wouldn't really matter whether app developers
1:10:47want to do it, whether podcast creators want to do it,
1:10:49or whether listeners want to have it happen,
1:10:51it would just happen.
1:10:52Again, getting back to web browsers,
1:10:54if every web browser influenced that W3C DRM scheme,
1:10:58it doesn't really matter whether you as a web browser user
1:11:03care about that, you're getting it
1:11:05whether you like it or not,
1:11:07which is why it's bad to concentrate power like this.
1:11:09So I think we've talked about this before,
1:11:11how we've basically been saved by Apple's,
1:11:14at one point, benevolent neglect
1:11:16and now just general benevolence of podcasts.
1:11:18The fact that they're not an advertising driven company,
1:11:21they don't care that much about podcasts,
1:11:23so they're gonna be careful about privacy
1:11:25and they're not gonna screw it up.
1:11:27It's an uneasy piece we have right now with podcasts
1:11:31and we just better hope that Apple
1:11:34doesn't turn into an advertising company
1:11:37or doesn't lose its dominant position in podcasts
1:11:39'cause that'll be bad for everybody.
1:11:41- So the other thing I wanted to say about this is,
1:11:44I'm gonna put a little bit of words in Marco's mouth
1:11:47and you know what, he's the editor,
1:11:49so he can always cut this later.
1:11:50But I feel like this is an example
1:11:55of why Marco is so fiercely independent
1:11:58and why Marco, you went for market share
1:12:02a year or two ago or whatever it's been.
1:12:04- For?
1:12:05- For that, for, good grief, God.
1:12:08- Sorry.
1:12:08- Anyway, the point I'm driving at is that
1:12:11if you have a lot of market share,
1:12:13if you have some amount of influence
1:12:17or perhaps leverage over the community
1:12:22or over the market, if you will,
1:12:23then you can say no to RAD or things like it
1:12:28and that may be enough.
1:12:31Now I don't know if you're at that point
1:12:32and honestly it doesn't really matter one way or the other,
1:12:34but for those of you who heard Marco say four years ago,
1:12:39oh, I'm going for market share
1:12:41because podcasting is important to me
1:12:43and I wanna try to steer it in the way
1:12:45that I think is best.
1:12:47Well now the fruits of your labor are coming to fruition
1:12:51because now by you not implementing this,
1:12:54I don't know if it would be enough to kill RAD,
1:12:55like I think you're right that Apple's the one
1:12:58who will really put the nail in the coffin,
1:13:00but by you and Pocket Casts, and I don't know
1:13:05if Castro's made a statement about this one way or the other.
1:13:07- I can't possibly see them doing this.
1:13:09- Yeah, exactly, and we know the Castro guys
1:13:12and they're great, great people and I agree
1:13:14that I don't expect them to do it.
1:13:15So by you guys as a collective and you as an individual
1:13:20angling for market share and refusing to do
1:13:23this sort of invasive stuff,
1:13:26that, if not you individually, but that in aggregate
1:13:29could be enough to really make this go away.
1:13:33And as both a podcast consumer and a podcast creator,
1:13:37that's really darn important to me
1:13:38and I'm thankful for you and Castro and Pocket Casts,
1:13:41at least so far, for standing your ground
1:13:44and not caving to this.
1:13:46And so if you scratch your head and thought Marco
1:13:48was being ridiculous and getting on his high horse
1:13:51for no good reason, well, maybe it was for good reason.
1:13:54It just took four years for us to get there.
1:13:56- Like ultimately what I want and what I've wanted
1:13:58this whole time is I want the podcast client side ecosystem,
1:14:03the player ecosystem, to be so diverse
1:14:07that nobody accumulates enough power
1:14:10to dictate things like this to the market.
1:14:12And Apple already has that much power,
1:14:14but due to the aforementioned benevolent neglect
1:14:17they've been mostly doing with podcasts,
1:14:19they're basically this giant unmovable force,
1:14:22but that mostly is good to us.
1:14:24That mostly doesn't make waves and doesn't ruin things
1:14:27and doesn't lock things down.
1:14:28And that's really nice.
1:14:29That has allowed podcasting to flourish
1:14:34and to be what it is today.
1:14:35If Apple tried to lock this down for themselves
1:14:3810 years ago, five years ago, they could have.
1:14:40And apps like mine wouldn't be able to really have a market,
1:14:44but they didn't and that's really nice.
1:14:47But beyond Apple, the other 30 to 40% of the market,
1:14:55that does have the potential for significant consolidation
1:14:59of power if it doesn't remain diverse.
1:15:02Right now it's nicely diverse.
1:15:04Spotify's a bit of a concern to me,
1:15:06but for the most part we're doing okay.
1:15:09And you can't get 40% of the market right now,
1:15:13'cause it's so many different players,
1:15:15to all agree on a new standard to implement.
1:15:18You're never gonna get all of us to do that.
1:15:21And that's actually really good.
1:15:25Besides Apple, which is not moving,
1:15:27there is no other consolidated source of power
1:15:29in this business that has enough power
1:15:32to really matter that much.
1:15:33And as a result, the medium can't move forward,
1:15:38quote forward in the way that people want it to.
1:15:41But I consider that a good thing,
1:15:43because right now where the medium already is, is great.
1:15:46It's thriving, it's flourishing, it's booming.
1:15:49People are making tons of money.
1:15:52It's very, very healthy.
1:15:54And it's wonderful for listeners too.
1:15:56It's not, you don't have people making tons of money
1:15:59at the top and then listeners having their privacy
1:16:01all crazily, horribly invaded on the other end.
1:16:05It's just really good, it's nice.
1:16:06It's a great market.
1:16:08And the last thing I want is for that to get ruined.
1:16:12And when people say, the people who argue
1:16:14for things like this, I was talking about it
1:16:16on Twitter the other day and I got a bunch
1:16:17of responses from people.
1:16:19Most really were in support of my position,
1:16:21but a few were opposed to me saying they need this.
1:16:25And be careful when you hear somebody describe anything
1:16:30as the future or as moving forward.
1:16:35Because that implies a certain level of inevitability
1:16:40that podcasting is, by staying where it is,
1:16:43by not implementing things like this,
1:16:45they're trying to position the future they want
1:16:50as the future period.
1:16:52And the future they want as the way forward.
1:16:56But that's not a foregone conclusion.
1:17:00The future of podcasting hasn't been written yet
1:17:05because it's the future.
1:17:06We can make it whatever we want.
1:17:10And based on certain power structures and dynamics
1:17:13in the market now, there are certain outcomes
1:17:16that are more likely than others.
1:17:17And I think an outcome where everyone's doing tons more
1:17:20of tracking on the client side is pretty unlikely
1:17:23because of the way this power structure is set up.
1:17:25And I would absolutely argue that it is not
1:17:30a foregone conclusion that the way forward
1:17:32is more ad tracking because that presumes
1:17:36that we have a problem today, that ads are terrible today
1:17:40and people can't build real businesses or whatever.
1:17:42And that's totally bogus.
1:17:44The only people trying to make that argument
1:17:46are the biggest companies in podcasting,
1:17:48who by the way, tend to make like millions of dollars
1:17:50a year in ad revenue.
1:17:51We don't need things like this.
1:17:53The only people pushing for this are people
1:17:54who want even more, even more, even more.
1:17:57And you know, that's what big companies do.
1:17:59I understand the urge to do that.
1:18:01But the rest of the podcasting ecosystem out here
1:18:04doesn't want or need any of this.
1:18:07And I would strongly argue that the future of podcasting
1:18:11is not gonna be what these handful of big publishers
1:18:14want it to be.
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1:20:10(upbeat music)
1:20:13I'm gonna try this.
1:20:15I apologize in advance.
1:20:16So Kapila Wimalararatne, I hope I got that right.
1:20:21- We've done this name before.
1:20:22You've read this name before.
1:20:24- Have I?
1:20:24- Yes.
1:20:25- Oh, yeah, totally.
1:20:27I totally knew that was correct.
1:20:28- You did better the second time,
1:20:29or the first time, rather.
1:20:31- Oh, well.
1:20:32Wimalararatne, I'm sorry.
1:20:33So Kapila writes, "Researching a TV purchase for next year.
1:20:36"Something I'm finding weird.
1:20:37"I'm not concerned about picture quality
1:20:39"since anything 4K over 40 inches
1:20:41"will be far superior to our current TV.
1:20:43"The criteria have narrowed down so far.
1:20:45"Built-in Chromecast, so I don't need to switch HDMI inputs
1:20:47"to cast from Google Home or Pixel 3.
1:20:49"Hard buttons on the remote to jump straight
1:20:51"to a given HDMI input when using PS4, et cetera.
1:20:54"A built-in webcam, question mark,
1:20:56"so my son could video chat with his friends
1:20:57"while online gaming, and that's it.
1:20:59"Is there something important missing from my list?
1:21:01"What is your criteria list for buying a new TV?
1:21:03"As I've stated in the past,
1:21:05"I haven't bought a TV in forever and a day,
1:21:07"so I am useless when it comes to this.
1:21:09"I have a feeling that Jon will have
1:21:11"the most thoughts about this,
1:21:12"so Marco, let's start with you.
1:21:14"Any immediate thoughts?"
1:21:16- I don't know how to shop for a TV
1:21:19for someone who says they're not concerned
1:21:20about picture quality.
1:21:21That's not my style, and so I really can't help on that.
1:21:25I also would highly question the feature request
1:21:29of a built-in webcam, because TV manufacturers
1:21:33are not known for their incredible privacy respect
1:21:36or their ability to deliver really secure software.
1:21:39I honestly don't think you should be plugging your TV
1:21:42into a network at all, or ever giving it
1:21:44your WiFi password, but that's just me.
1:21:46Maybe I'm being overly cautious there.
1:21:48But however, the feature request for hard buttons
1:21:53on the remote to jump straight to a certain HDMI input,
1:21:57I would love that.
1:21:59I hate going to the input menu and going down
1:22:01and hitting enter, or having to hit the input switch button
1:22:05and going through one by one.
1:22:07I would love to just have, look,
1:22:08there's only four HDMI inputs.
1:22:10Just have HDMI one, two, three, and four buttons
1:22:12on the remote.
1:22:12That would be amazing.
1:22:14My TV doesn't have that, so I can't recommend it, I guess.
1:22:16But that is a feature request that I wouldn't have thought
1:22:19to make, but wow, does that sound great.
1:22:21I wish I had made that feature request.
1:22:23- John?
1:22:24- Built-in Chromecast.
1:22:27These features, I'm in Marco's camp work.
1:22:29Picture quality is the thing that I care about the most.
1:22:32But, you know, there's something important missing
1:22:35from my list.
1:22:36Like, yeah, webcam thing covered.
1:22:38Luckily, I don't think you'll even be able
1:22:39to find many TVs with webcams.
1:22:41Mine has one, by the way, because they used to be a thing
1:22:43that people did, but it's not very popular anymore.
1:22:47The thing about the built-in Chromecast,
1:22:51Chromecast is not expensive or big.
1:22:54Like, you can add it to any television.
1:22:56Like, I wouldn't reject a television
1:22:57because it doesn't have built-in Chromecast.
1:22:59You can add Chromecast very, very easily and cheaply.
1:23:02It's not a thing that you have to get a TV
1:23:04where it's built-in.
1:23:05In fact, it'd be better for it not to be built-in
1:23:06because if Chromecast gets better
1:23:08or there's a new Chromecast that comes out,
1:23:10you can upgrade it, whereas if it's built-in, you can't.
1:23:12The hard buttons on the remote thing
1:23:13for jumping to inputs, setting aside
1:23:15the most television remotes are terrible.
1:23:18If you just get a receiver, like you have that,
1:23:21receivers have buttons for not only switching inputs,
1:23:24but switching to like whatever they might call them,
1:23:25scenes or presets or whatever, which is a combination
1:23:28of input and a bunch of other settings.
1:23:30So my receiver remote has, I think, at least four,
1:23:33probably more buttons that let me switch
1:23:35to different scenes and also direct buttons
1:23:38to go to each of the inputs,
1:23:39which then it's more than four inputs you can go to.
1:23:41The television is only, you know, if you have this setup,
1:23:45is only ever on one input.
1:23:46It's only ever on the input
1:23:48that's coming out of your receiver.
1:23:49So there are better solutions to that.
1:23:52And even if you don't have direct input switching,
1:23:55if you have the thing that works 50% of the time,
1:23:59what are the hell is it called, HEC or?
1:24:01- CEC.
1:24:02- CEC, yeah.
1:24:04If you are a CEC unicorn and you get a television setup
1:24:07where that works all the time,
1:24:08you don't have to switch inputs either
1:24:09because it'll auto switch based on
1:24:10which one is giving output.
1:24:11So this feature list looks really weird to me.
1:24:13And I think this feature list,
1:24:15say this is kind of like I'm trying to suss out like,
1:24:18what are you looking for in a TV
1:24:19based on the things you listed?
1:24:21There's a bunch of things you probably haven't thought about
1:24:24that may be important, like how long does it take
1:24:26from the time you hit the power button in the television
1:24:28to the time you can start watching television?
1:24:29Like sort of the boot time?
1:24:31How sluggish are the menus?
1:24:35Where on the screen is the volume up and down thing
1:24:40if you use the volume on television,
1:24:42which you shouldn't because you should have a receiver
1:24:43and it should be invisible on TV.
1:24:45And how ugly is it?
1:24:46Samsung has incredibly ugly overlays for their volume thing
1:24:49showing like an ugly speaker cone
1:24:51with a glow around it and crap like that.
1:24:53Things like that you'll never think about
1:24:55in your sort of criteria.
1:24:56But once you get a TV, you'll be like,
1:24:57oh, every time I change the volume on the TV,
1:25:00I see an animated frog jumps across my screen
1:25:04and says, "Ribbit," right?
1:25:05And then the overlay stays on the screen for seven seconds
1:25:08after I stop hitting the volume button.
1:25:10Stuff like that will probably have a bigger effect
1:25:14on your enjoyment of your television
1:25:16than whether it has a built-in Chromecast.
1:25:19But all of this said, like everyone's got
1:25:22their own criteria.
1:25:22My criteria are almost entirely about picture quality.
1:25:26And then I live with all the other things
1:25:29that are inevitably going to annoy me about the television
1:25:31because most of the time I'm using my television,
1:25:33I'm not touching the remote and there's nothing
1:25:35on the screen except for the picture I'm displaying.
1:25:37So that's why I feel like picture quality
1:25:38is my biggest criteria.
1:25:40But as for what you're missing, I guess you'll find out
1:25:42after you buy your Chromecast TV with a webcam.
1:25:46- Wow.
1:25:48All right, Ivan writes, "I have a few Blu-rays
1:25:51"that I've converted with MakeMKV,
1:25:53"but my Mac Mini Plex server has a hard time
1:25:55"live encoding 30 gigabyte MKV movies.
1:26:00"So which settings do you use to compress those large MKVs?
1:26:04"Handbrake has so many options
1:26:06"and the internet has too many opinions.
1:26:08"This is why you trust somebody else to do it."
1:26:10So we've made mention of this many times in the past,
1:26:13but Don Melton, who among other things was instrumental
1:26:16in getting Safari onto Mac computers,
1:26:20he in his retirement has decided to do the community
1:26:24a tremendous service and create a series of scripts
1:26:27that you can use to transcode videos.
1:26:29And I have a less discerning eye,
1:26:32certainly than Jon and probably than Marco in this context.
1:26:35And so for me, I am more than happy
1:26:40with the output of Don Melton scripts.
1:26:42And you do have to be able to use command line,
1:26:44but it is very straightforward.
1:26:45Well, it's easy for me to say that
1:26:46'cause I'm used to the command line,
1:26:47but I find it to be very straightforward and easy to use.
1:26:50And basically it will take those 30 gig MKVs
1:26:54down to like anywhere between five and 10 gigs,
1:26:56depending on the particular film.
1:26:58And you can use it without,
1:26:59he has a bunch of options that you can give to his scripts
1:27:02in order to tweak this, that, or the other thing.
1:27:04But really I just use them in the default settings.
1:27:08The only real option I give the script
1:27:11is to tell it to output an MP4
1:27:13rather than a compressed MKV.
1:27:16And that's more than enough for me,
1:27:18and that's what I recommend.
1:27:19So Jon, thoughts about that?
1:27:22- So the business about real time live encoding
1:27:25a 30 gigabyte MKV movie,
1:27:27depending on the compression codec used on Blu-rays,
1:27:30I think they have two options,
1:27:31like there's the VP whatever thing,
1:27:33and I forget what the other option is,
1:27:34probably some MPEG thing.
1:27:36If you have a player that can natively play
1:27:39whatever codec is used on the Blu-ray that you're showing,
1:27:42there is no sort of recompression step
1:27:45or transcoding step that has to take place.
1:27:47It can just take that 30 gigabyte data
1:27:51that it pulled right off the Blu-ray disc
1:27:52and didn't transcode or change in any way,
1:27:55and just send it to the decoder
1:27:57that will decode that image and put it on your screen.
1:27:59That's the benefit of using it and make MKV
1:28:01to just pull the data off of Blu-ray
1:28:03without changing it in any way.
1:28:04Just take the bits that are on the disc
1:28:06and put those bits in a file, in a container, blah, blah, blah.
1:28:09That's not, that's conceivable.
1:28:12That's the thing that you can do.
1:28:13In fact, I think Infuse on Apple TV will natively play
1:28:18without any transcoding or recompressing
1:28:21at least one of the formats
1:28:22that it's commonly used on Blu-rays.
1:28:24But that's something you might wanna look into.
1:28:25If you're worried about quality
1:28:28and you don't care about disc space,
1:28:29which apparently you don't
1:28:30'cause you're pulling 30 gigs off of Blu-rays,
1:28:33look into that, 'cause then you don't have to worry
1:28:36about recompressing into what format
1:28:37should I compress in a river.
1:28:38I, as Casey surmised, don't particularly like the idea
1:28:43of taking compressed video and then compressing it again,
1:28:47no matter how many options and settings there are,
1:28:50it's a lossy process.
1:28:51You are losing quality.
1:28:53It's why I buy Blu-ray discs and why I play Blu-ray discs,
1:28:56because it's already lossy compressed.
1:28:59I'll just take it the best I can get it,
1:29:03straight off the disc, decode the image, decode the sound,
1:29:06put it to the outputs.
1:29:07I think the last time I looked into doing that
1:29:11with my setup, I couldn't get the 24 frame per second cadence
1:29:13but now presumably with the new Apple TV I could,
1:29:15but I haven't actually revisited it
1:29:16because disc base is still an issue.
1:29:19Blu-rays are very big and I'm still just putting plastic
1:29:22discs into a drive and dealing with it like that.
1:29:25But yeah, if you are going to recompress
1:29:28either mountain scripts or honestly,
1:29:30Handbrake has a bunch of options, but it also has presets.
1:29:33A whole bunch of presets come with Handbrake.
1:29:36Try a couple of the presets to Casey's point.
1:29:39If you find a preset that makes files
1:29:41that are about the size that you want
1:29:43and they look okay to you, you're done.
1:29:45Like it may not be the best thing in the world,
1:29:47but if you can't tell the difference
1:29:48and you're happy with them and they compress down
1:29:51to a size that you like, just keep using that preset.
1:29:53You'll probably be fine.
1:29:55The only places where you might be,
1:29:56get a little bit messed up are if it's messing
1:29:59with the frame rate, which can be a little bit tricky
1:30:01to mess with, you probably shouldn't change the frame rate
1:30:03of the video at all because then it'll interpolate
1:30:05and you're basically just embedding motion smoothing
1:30:07into your videos, which will make somebody sad,
1:30:09but hey, maybe you can't tell.
1:30:11And also if it's a particularly strange movie,
1:30:13like if it's animation versus live action,
1:30:15sometimes artifacts that aren't visible in live action
1:30:17become visible in animation due to the large regions
1:30:20of uninterrupted color and other things
1:30:22that are unique in animation.
1:30:24And if you just don't wanna deal with any of this
1:30:28and you're compressing video anyway,
1:30:29you can just buy it from iTunes or some other video service
1:30:32and then hopefully play that natively
1:30:35on the player of choice.
1:30:36And instead of buying giant videos on Blu-ray
1:30:38and then figuring out a way to get them off the disc
1:30:40and compress them.
1:30:41- All right, Brian Edwards writes,
1:30:42"What would you recommend for somebody
1:30:43"who wants to learn their way around
1:30:45"a command line interface?"
1:30:46I don't have any particularly good suggestions for this.
1:30:50As always, in the same way that I say this
1:30:52about learning to write code,
1:30:55really you need a specific task in mind,
1:30:58at least that's what works best for me
1:31:00is having a specific task in mind
1:31:02and looking for a solution for that task.
1:31:04But one of you added a link to a book in the show notes,
1:31:08so who was that?
1:31:10- I'll give you one guess.
1:31:11- Yeah, I had a feeling, but you never know, you never know.
1:31:14- So this is actually a difficult question
1:31:16because as I think I've recounted before,
1:31:18this is another situation where people ask,
1:31:21what's a good way for me to get started learning
1:31:24whatever subject?
1:31:25And they ask someone who has experience
1:31:28in whatever the field of the subject is.
1:31:30And the way that that person learned so many years ago
1:31:35is almost never the best way to learn right now.
1:31:40- That's almost certainly true about this.
1:31:43The best way to learn your way around the command line
1:31:45is probably some online course or tutorial
1:31:49or something that I don't know about
1:31:50because that's not how I learned
1:31:51because when I learned it, the web didn't exist, right?
1:31:53So, but anyway, the answer is really,
1:31:58I don't know, there's probably a really good way to learn it
1:32:00and I don't know what it is and you can go and find it.
1:32:02But if you're asking how I learned it,
1:32:04and also I think this is a way you could learn it,
1:32:08there are a bunch of old books and other things that I read
1:32:13and then actually the main way I learned
1:32:16the command line stuff is by printing man pages
1:32:19on the printer at my college.
1:32:22So you could just do like man command pipe LPR
1:32:26and it will just print the man pages
1:32:28and then it take the man pages on paper
1:32:30back to my dorm room and read them.
1:32:32I do not recommend it, however, that is special.
1:32:35It will take you a long time.
1:32:37The man pages are, some of them are well written
1:32:39but most of them are not.
1:32:40But there is a book that I read.
1:32:41I read many, many books when I was an undergrad in college,
1:32:44many books about Unix and the book I'm gonna recommend
1:32:48is not the first book I read and it's not like,
1:32:51the title, as the title suggests,
1:32:52not like a teach me the basics type thing,
1:32:55but I'm still gonna recommend it and I'll explain why.
1:32:57The book is called "Unix Power Tools."
1:32:59So it's basically saying like,
1:33:00"Oh, so you know the basics of Unix,
1:33:01"well, here's some power tools," right?
1:33:03It's an older book. (laughing)
1:33:05It's in like third edition,
1:33:07but the third edition is like 10 years old, right?
1:33:10It contains a bunch of information
1:33:12that is basically not relevant to modern Unix or Linux
1:33:17or anything like that.
1:33:19- Oh, you're selling it well.
1:33:20- Right, but what it shows you is,
1:33:23what it shows you is the mindset of,
1:33:25so you've got some basic knowledge
1:33:27about how to use command line stuff.
1:33:28What can you do with these tools?
1:33:30And it strings them together in different combinations
1:33:32that I think will be mind expanding and eye opening,
1:33:36both to learn what it is that you can do,
1:33:38like how an operating system works, how Unix works,
1:33:41even if your particular Linux doesn't work like this
1:33:42or your Unix doesn't look like this.
1:33:44The things they describe, the details are no longer relevant,
1:33:47but the concepts are, and to say,
1:33:50all right, so you've got a Unix operating system
1:33:51that works like this, and you've got this bucket of tools,
1:33:54this toolbox over there, what can you do?
1:33:56And it's kind of like, getting back to the shortcuts
1:33:59we were talking about the other day,
1:34:00seeing someone build a shortcut,
1:34:02and make it do something you didn't think shortcuts
1:34:05could do by just stringing together a bunch of pieces
1:34:07in a novel way, is mind expanding.
1:34:09So "Unix Power Tools" is a huge book,
1:34:11and it's kind of like jumping into the deep end
1:34:13because it assumes some base knowledge
1:34:14that you may or may not have, but I guarantee you,
1:34:16if you read "Unix Power Tools" from cover to cover,
1:34:18and start with zero knowledge by the end of it,
1:34:21you will grok, as we used to say,
1:34:24you will understand the Unix command line way better
1:34:29than someone who just did a basic tutorial
1:34:31of like here are the bases of how to use the command line.
1:34:33I think it actually is a very valuable tool
1:34:36for understanding the mindset of Unix,
1:34:40and seeing just how deep the rabbit hole goes.
1:34:43Even if you don't understand every single thing
1:34:45that's described in it, and even if you don't know
1:34:46which parts are relevant or which parts aren't,
1:34:48you'll be in a better place when you come out
1:34:51the other side of this phone book sized Unix book.
1:34:54- I would go with a little bit simpler solution.
1:34:58I would say, as the old saying goes,
1:35:01necessity is the mother of all command line experience.
1:35:04I would say, try to do something with a Linux server.
1:35:09So we have sponsor of this episode, Linode,
1:35:12you can get one for five bucks a month.
1:35:14Get a Linux server for whatever level of resources you need,
1:35:17which is probably five bucks a month,
1:35:19and try to set up something on it,
1:35:21whether it's like a VPN or a small simple web app
1:35:24or some kind of other server role.
1:35:28Setting up a Linux server requires you
1:35:31to do everything remotely via the command line,
1:35:34and that will teach you a ton of basics.
1:35:36And as I said last episode during this discussion,
1:35:38the basics you learn on the Linux server,
1:35:41much of that will apply also to Mac OS.
1:35:44A lot of the basics of using the command line
1:35:45will apply to Mac OS as well.
1:35:48Not every single tool is the same,
1:35:50but they're all pretty similar, or they're very close.
1:35:53So having to do something will basically force you
1:35:58at every step, like, okay, I'm getting this weird error,
1:36:00or I'm stuck in VI, how do I get out?
1:36:04There's gonna be something that's gonna make you
1:36:07do a bunch of web searches to save your butt
1:36:09every single time, and that process will build expertise,
1:36:13and you will learn it, and you will have the goal in mind,
1:36:16then the motivating force of whatever you want
1:36:19this server to do for you.
1:36:21And you will hopefully, then at the end of it,
1:36:24have something useful.
1:36:25- The chat room is commenting on my description
1:36:28of this as a phone book size book.
1:36:29It is actually 1,200 pages in paper form, the third edition.
1:36:34So it is a very big book.
1:36:35- Oh, God.
1:36:36- And yes, I did read it from cover cover.
1:36:38In fact, it's sitting on, within arm's reach right now,
1:36:40I can touch the spine of the book,
1:36:41and I was looking at it to see,
1:36:42do I have the first edition?
1:36:43I'm pretty sure I do have the first edition,
1:36:44'cause I got it a long time ago.
1:36:46And back then, O'Reilly, which was then the king
1:36:49of the technical books for budding
1:36:52computer/internet nerds, they had a brand
1:36:55for their various books, which was like the Nutshell series.
1:36:59It would be like, learn whatever in a nutshell.
1:37:01Like it was just one book that would tell you
1:37:02everything you needed to know about send mail or whatever.
1:37:05So the Unix Power Tools has the Nutshell logo on it.
1:37:07- Yeah, Unix Power Tools in a nutshell.
1:37:09So in a nutshell, it's 1,200 pages.
1:37:12Kind of subverting the brand there.
1:37:15But the thing is, it doesn't tell you everything
1:37:18you ever could know about using Unix,
1:37:20because there's just too much to know.
1:37:21So in some respects, it is in a nutshell,
1:37:23but in other respects, it's not at all.
1:37:27But yeah, I think it's incredibly valuable
1:37:31to read that book, and this is another advantage
1:37:34you get from listening to ATP.
1:37:35No one else is gonna tell you to read that big book.
1:37:37No one else is going to have read it.
1:37:38You, by reading it, will know secret things
1:37:41that no one else knows.
1:37:43- You're probably doing more than me and Casey.
1:37:45- Yeah, definitely, for sure.
1:37:46You will know incredibly obscure stuff
1:37:48will probably never become useful.
1:37:50But actually, I think it will make lots of the weird,
1:37:52Unix is weird in that there's lots of residue or layers.
1:37:56It's like an archeological dig.
1:37:58It's like, why does this command have these flags?
1:38:01Or what is the mnemonic,
1:38:02what is that command even supposed to mean?
1:38:05Or why do these two commands exist
1:38:07with this third command that seems like a combination?
1:38:08Like, if you learn the history behind it, it helps you,
1:38:11it's kind of like a story you tell yourself.
1:38:13It helps you remember how things fit together.
1:38:15You're not just remembering arbitrary stuff.
1:38:16You kind of see how things evolved.
1:38:19I don't know if this is the same category.
1:38:22We're in the same category last show where I said,
1:38:24like, command shift one was eject the first floppy drive,
1:38:27and command shift two was eject the second.
1:38:29Now you know why command shift three is over there.
1:38:30Maybe it helps you remember
1:38:32what the screenshot keyboard command is,
1:38:35because now there's a story to go along with it.
1:38:36You know it's three because one and two are floppy drives.
1:38:39Maybe that's a bad analogy, but I always feel like knowing,
1:38:43knowing the reasons behind things
1:38:45helps you to internalize them better than just memorizing.
1:38:49Like, oh, I just have to know, you know,
1:38:51this flag is like that and capital letters do this,
1:38:54and this command is called that for these reasons,
1:38:56and this is why the variant of that command
1:38:58is called something different.
1:39:00Anyway, check it out.
1:39:01It's a big, giant paper book.
1:39:03It's cool, you should read it.
1:39:04- Thanks to our sponsors this week,
1:39:06Squarespace, Eero, and Linode,
1:39:08and we'll talk to you next week.
1:39:10♪ And now the snow is falling ♪
1:39:14♪ Their kids are building snowmen ♪
1:39:17♪ It's accidental ♪
1:39:19♪ Accidental ♪
1:39:21♪ Holiday fun time ♪
1:39:23♪ Holiday fun time ♪
1:39:24♪ John's gonna make snow angels ♪
1:39:27♪ Marco and Casey are gonna let him ♪
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1:39:33♪ Accidental ♪
1:39:35♪ Syracuse angels ♪
1:39:36♪ Holiday fun time ♪
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1:39:41♪ Deep in Santa's beard ♪
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1:40:00♪ A-R-M-E-N-T ♪
1:40:03♪ Marco, Armin, S-I-R-A-C ♪
1:40:08♪ USA, Syracuse, uh ♪
1:40:12♪ It's an accidental ♪
1:40:14♪ Accidental ♪
1:40:16♪ Snowball fight ♪
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1:40:21♪ Accidental ♪
1:40:23♪ Holiday tech ♪
1:40:24♪ A podcast so long ♪
1:40:27- You should get, Unix Power Tools, a great gift idea.
1:40:30- Yeah. (laughs)
1:40:31- Look for it in your stocking.
1:40:33- If you need a last minute Christmas gift,
1:40:35that one probably won't be out of stock.
1:40:37- Yeah, probably.
1:40:38- No, actually, I went on the,
1:40:40I always wonder how popular these books are.
1:40:43I wanted to see if it was still even in print,
1:40:44but on the Amazon page, they think that it was like,
1:40:47hurry, only three more in stock,
1:40:49and available from other sellers.
1:40:50You can buy it directly from O'Reilly too.
1:40:51There's also a Kindle version.
1:40:53Although I feel like you're missing out
1:40:54if you don't get to see the cool fonts and everything
1:40:57for all the Command Line stuff.
1:40:59(laughs)
1:41:00- Like, true. - Corrier.
1:41:02- O'Reilly books, did you guys read O'Reilly books
1:41:06when you were learning stuff?
1:41:06- Yes, but it's been a long time.
1:41:08- Yeah, yeah, yeah.
1:41:09- So they use, they look like they were laid out using
1:41:13the, what the hell is it, the typesetting thing,
1:41:18LaTeX, or latex, or however you wanna pronounce it.
1:41:23They look like they were laid out using that,
1:41:25whether they were--
1:41:25- It's pronounced for cotta.
1:41:27- Yeah, whether they were or not,
1:41:29because they use a similar font.
1:41:30And just sort of the style,
1:41:32like what do I use for my monospace font?
1:41:34What's my proportional font?
1:41:35How do I set out the code examples?
1:41:37Just has a certain historic flavor that I appreciate,
1:41:41because it reminds me of all those books from that era.
1:41:44(beeping)
1:41:46[ Silence ]